INNOVATION ARTICLE How electronic requisitions are eliminating one of clinical research's most expensive operational challenges.
A missing visit number. An incomplete patient identifier. An unchecked box on a requisition form. These may seem like minor oversights, but across a clinical trial they create one of the industry's most persistent and costly operational challenges: sample queries.
For central laboratories, a query occurs whenever essential information is missing, inconsistent, or incomplete, preventing a sample from being confidently identified and processed. The consequences extend far beyond a single correction. Each query creates additional documentation requirements, audit trail activities, site follow-up, database updates, and delays in reporting results or shipping samples.
At first glance, these may seem like minor administrative oversights. Yet in clinical trials, even a small omission at the point of sample collection can trigger a cascade of downstream activities, generating queries, delaying sample processing, increasing costs, and creating additional burden for sites and laboratory teams.
For more than 15 years, Eurofins Central Laboratory has worked to address this challenge. What began as an effort to reduce paper-based errors evolved into the development of EzRF, a digital requisition platform designed to improve sample documentation, increase visibility, and reduce costly discrepancies before samples reach the laboratory.
The journey has provided valuable insights into what drives query reduction, what influences site adoption, and why digital workflows are increasingly becoming a critical component of modern clinical trials.