Headed Down Registry Road? Here Are The EDC Features You'll Need

By OpenClinica

Here in Massachusetts, with the March winds whipping and snow always a threat, a week’s vacation down south is common fantasy. Even if it means a 10-hour car ride, most of us relish the thought.

But suppose our usual set of wheels, a Mini Cooper, say, is in the shop. (Potholes the size of craters are a common reality here.) Instead of foregoing our vacation, we decide to rent a vehicle. Chances are another Mini Cooper won’t rank as our first choice. Sure, a car that size could get us from Boston to the Outer Banks. But at what cost to our comfort and cargo?

We can think of study designs as kinds of road trips, and our eClinical tools as vehicles. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and registry studies are only two such journeys, but they’re two of the most frequent we in the research community take. In both cases, most of us rely on electronic data capture (EDC) to help us reach our destination.

How do we choose the EDC “vehicle” that will get us there safely, with minimal delays?