How Actigraphy Is Clearing Operational Barriers To Decentralized Trials

Wearable-enabled decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) are transforming drug development by empowering patients to participate from home, reducing the burdens on participants, and expanding the opportunities to collect data. Yet, operational challenges are impeding efforts to realize those benefits. Faced with those barriers, sponsors are turning to proven systems for collecting real-world data to support their DCTs.

Interest in DCTs is underpinned by a recognition of the clear advantages of allowing trial participants to report data directly from home. Notably, DCTs loosen, and in some cases sever, the tie between geographic proximity to sites and willingness to participate in clinical trials. Of all the structural and clinical barriers to research participation, a lack of access to studies is by far the biggest obstacle.¹ Geography is central to the problem, with 67% of oncologists being unlikely to refer participants who live two hours from a site.²