Ensuring Your BYOD Strategy Meets The Rigor Of Regulators

By Melissa Mooney, Director, eCOA Solutions Engineering, IQVIA eCOA

Electronic Clinical Outcomes Assessments (eCOA) play a central role in decentralized clinical trials (DCTs). eCOAs allow patients to share data about their treatment experience, outcomes and quality of life, all from the comfort of their homes.

Once sponsors add eCOAs in DCTs and hybrid trials, a common question emerges: Can patients reliably complete eCOAs on their personal devices?

Giving patients the option to download study apps to their phones rather than providing them with an extra piece of study specific hardware brings benefits for patients, clinical site staff and sponsors. Bring your own device (BYOD) options are more convenient and familiar for users who don’t want to learn a new interface. Patients are also more likely to have their personal devices with them at all times, ensuring they receive alerts to complete assessments on time. It is one more way sponsors can improve compliance and reduce the burden of participation.

At the same time, sponsors benefit from lower costs and faster timelines when they don’t have to acquire, ship and manage provisioned devices. This can accelerate study startup while potentially trimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from a larger trial budget.