eSource: Power To The Patient

People don’t participate in clinical trials in hopes of making more trips to the clinic, changing their daily routines, or struggling with cumbersome or intrusive reporting requirements. At best, these hindrances are “necessary evils” of trial participation. At worst, they’re non-starters for potential participants, the reasons patients stop adhering to the study protocol, or factors that ultimately lead to study discontinuation.

Fortunately, as Sponsors incorporate eSource technologies and decentralized data collection into their trials, these barriers to patient participation and adherence are beginning to fall away. Direct Data Capture (DDC) software can collect patient data at the instant they’re initially recorded in an electronic format—i.e., during telehealth visits, in electronic diaries and patient engagement platforms, and via sensors and wearables.

In the broadest sense, eSource technologies allow Sponsors to center trials on patients and their needs as never before. This advancement of clinical trials can thus be based on comprehensive, actionable, patient-centered measures and assessments, or what Clinical ink calls “patient science.”