The Potential Return On Investment Of Using ePROs Over Paper In Clinical Trials

Studies show that electronic patient reporting yields higher quality data than paper-based diaries and that electronic patient reported outcomes (ePROs) drive greater participant compliance. With our behavioral science-driven platform, compliance rates are consistently above 90% and retention rates are above 85% in our client’s clinical trials. For the past decade, both the FDA and EMA have begun to accept ePRO study data, and the number of trials using both electronic data capture (EDC) and ePRO has grown steadily. Despite these advances and the general use of technology in every part of our lives, some clinical trials continue to use paper-based questionnaires.

Industry perception is that the start-up costs of implementing an ePRO platform may dwarf the cost of printing and distributing paper diaries by as much as 10 times. However, this does not take into consideration the significant value and return on investment that adopting ePRO technology, such as Datacubed Health’s Linkt, has had on overall clinical trial costs and timelines due to improvements in data quality and completeness, participant retention and compliance, and study and site efficiency.