How Will mHealth Benefit Clinical Trials?

In the past 50 years, since the onset of the digital age, the world has been transformed by technology. In the last decade, we’ve seen technology further disrupt the way we shop, communicate, and get from point A to point B. Today, technology has the potential to transform the way the biopharmaceutical industry conducts clinical trials and even disrupt clinical development altogether. Mobile health technologies, or mHealth, have gotten a lot of buzz lately and enable patients to collect and remotely transfer health information. Examples of mHealth include a wide range of tools from health-oriented apps to activity trackers, sensors, smart watches, and beyond. In fact, many of these gadgets blur the line between cool tech and medical device, like the Series 4 Apple watch that has been given clearance by the FDA for its electrocardiogram readings.

To understand more about how mHealth could impact clinical development, ISR conducted in-depth interviews with experts in digital health technology. ISR also collected quantitative data via an online survey to gather hard data on familiarity with mHealth technologies, projected implementation, and usage rates in recent or soon-to-be conducted clinical trials. The results from the quantitative study informed us that one-fifth of respondents worked at companies with no current use and no future plans to use mHealth technologies in clinical trials. One-third of respondents mentioned plans to use mHealth in clinical trials in the coming 12 months, but no current use, and half of respondents work at companies currently using mHealth technologies in clinical trials.