3 key ways to improve the medical grantmaking process

When it comes to medical grantmaking, time is of the essence. Manual workflows and time-consuming approval processes can delay product delivery and treatment access for patients in need. These programs are also governed by global regulations and require strict compliance. As a result, speed must be carefully balanced against oversight.  

Today, most life sciences companies manage medical grants programs in spreadsheets and emails. But manually navigating multiple types of grants, multinational borders and business units, regulatory differences, and siloed data can cause data inconsistencies, errors, and non-compliance. Instead, leading organizations rely on medical grants software that can be tailored to meet unique program requirements and evolving needs.  

At Bonterra, we have over 20 years of experience working with life sciences companies of all sizes to build a platform with embedded compliance and streamlined workflows. Together, we’ll help you accelerate funding, improve efficiency, and provide visibility across your full suite of funding programs. Let’s discuss three game-changing ways that Bonterra’s medical grants software can simplify and improve your grantmaking lifecycle.  

1. Create a single source of truth

When your medical grants programs are tracked in multiple systems, it's difficult to gain a holistic view of your impact and understand where your dollars are going. Adopting a unified grants management platform streamlines your team’s process by eliminating the need to navigate multiple systems, reducing errors and data inconsistencies. 

With Bonterra’s medical grants solution, you can house all your activities in one location, making program management easier and compliance a no-brainer. Our software supports and enables a variety of medical grants programming, including: 

• Independent medical education 
• Expanded access programs 
• Charitable contributions 
• Investigator-initiated research, studies, and trials 
• Patient advocacy 
• Fellowships and sponsorships 

Whether your organization supports expanded access, patient advocacy grants, investigator-initiated research, or all of the above, being able to manage your programs within a single platform results in unprecedented flexibility, visibility, and improved risk control. 

2. Overcome your biggest medical grantmaking obstacles 

When moving from a manual medical grantmaking process to one that is efficient, streamlined, and reliable, it’s important to identify your primary obstacles and opportunities for improvement. Let’s explore three common challenges we often see our customers face and how Bonterra’s medical grants solution can alleviate those pain points. 

Complex approval workflows 

Particularly for expanded access, building approval workflows and their associated steps can be a complex process. Each workflow and the specific users involved may vary based on a range of criteria like country, disease, therapeutic area, product, and dollar amount.  

Solution: Workflow automation 

With Bonterra’s medical grants software, you can define the baseline approval workflow for your program, along with the associated review and approval criteria. With that information, our software will do all the thinking for you while also allowing you the flexibility to override if necessary. The engine defines the steps and the people or roles involved, enforces permissions, and executes the rules required for each step in the process. 

Privacy and compliance 

Maintaining privacy and compliance regulations from country to country can be an intensive and involved task. When new regulatory requirements arise, it can be difficult to adapt quickly as they’re rolled out in different countries.  

Solution: Tailored processing and automated alerts 

Bonterra facilitates advanced privacy and compliance management by allowing customers to tailor their information handling and approval processing based on region-specific regulations. This can be particularly helpful for international companies.  

Additionally, users can integrate the platform directly with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other internal watchlists as well as build any compliance or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) alerts directly into the platform.  

Duplicate data  

When there are multiple users entering data into various systems, you run the risk of manual error and duplicate data. Since accuracy is paramount for your medical grants programs, it’s necessary to lower the possibility of duplicate data as much as possible. 

Solution: System consolidation 

Bonterra’s medical grants software allows you to integrate your platform with every system that interacts with your programs. This platform will serve as the hub — or single source of truth — for your entire review and approval process, which will push and pull data to and from your various systems. 

3. Embrace unmatched medical grantmaking capabilities 

At Bonterra, we partner with leading life sciences organizations to understand best practices and continually integrate emerging industry trends into our solutions. As a result, we offer capabilities that are uniquely positioned to support your medical grants programs. Some of our essential product features and capabilities include: 

• Insights: Our robust analytics solution can help your organization maintain regulatory compliance, aggregate data across multiple programs, identify bottlenecks in workflows and approval processes, and more.  
• Dynamic approval routing: With user tagging functionality, you can tag individuals with specific attributes associated with approval criteria. This means that requests for approval will automatically route to users who meet a predefined set of criteria. 
• Workflow status: From submission all the way to impact reporting, you can easily identify the status of a grant request through every step of its lifecycle. 
• Worksheets: This feature offers a new way to capture and store multi-dimensional data in a tabular format. By seamlessly embedding tables in your grant requests or impact reports, you can display your data in logical columns and rows for easy analysis. 
• eSignature integration. Users can integrate their system with eSignature providers (like DocuSign) to sign and execute agreements while complying with industry and region-specific laws and standards for electronic signatures and identity verification. 

Your trusted partner in medical grants management

With experience working with life sciences companies of all sizes — from some of the largest in the industry to those ramping up with phase three trials — Bonterra will work alongside you to build a platform tailored to meet your program’s unique needs and requirements. Equipped with industry best practices and pre-built templates, our experts will help you implement a customized, long-lasting, and scalable medical grants platform.   

For even more ways that Bonterra can help you streamline every step of your grants management process, download our complete guide, “Take your medical grantmaking process from fractured to functional.” And if you’re ready to join the ranks of leading life sciences organizations, schedule a demo with one of our experts.