
Exploring The Specific Challenges Of Pediatric Clinical Trials – Insights From Site Experts
In this first episode on pediatric clinical trial challenges, Begoña Nafria, pediatrician and patient engagement
The Shift to Data Collection at Home: Strategies to Support Flexibility, Ensure Data Quality, and Preserve Data Privacy
The rate at which we now collect data in clinical trials is astonishing. With decentralization of clinical trials, study data comes from numerous channels. This includes online electronic Diaries (eDiaries) and electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePROs), wearable devices, electronic informed consent, laboratory results, home health nurses, in addition to the information captured during site visits. Data is being collected at exponential timepoints. Clinical studies capture three times as much data as they did ten years ago. This can lead to thousands of data points per day from a single patient!
What are the risks linked to increased data collection from home? How can clinical teams identify and mitigate those risks? What are the strategies that can be put in place to support flexibility in data collection, guarantee data quality, and preserve data privacy?
Always Question the Data you Actually Need
When it comes to collecting data from home, electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) has become the most adopted technology in clinical trials. It allows ePRO and eDiary data to be collected at various timepoints, secures contemporaneousness, legibility, logic, attributability, and overall accuracy of data. Alongside home data collection comes the temptation to ask patients to provide data anytime, anywhere. This may result in requesting more data than is necessary to answer the protocol questions. This carries not only the risk of patients experiencing data collection fatigue but can also complicate the management and logistics of the technology used to collect the data. This becomes even more important as study duration increases.
Mitigating the risks that come with data collection at multiple timepoints requires clinical teams to examine the type of data they need, the purpose of the data being collected, how to react in case of missing data, and identify fallback plans if the primary data collection method fails.
Anticipate Patient Fatigue and Think about Flexibility
To avoid patients experiencing fatigue during the study course, more flexibility must be offered:
Do Not Underestimate the Time Needed for Technology Training
When planning the study, it is important to anticipate the time commitment for technology training to mitigate the risk of poor technology adoption by sites.
It is well known that an unhappy site staff makes for unhappy patients. For the site team to fully understand and feel comfortable using the technology, it is critical to take the time to offer clinical sites the relevant training adapted to their prior experience. Creating the opportunity to test the distinct modes and different steps of data collection before the study goes live will result in well trained and confident site staff. A higher rate of technology adoption will lead to a positive site team and patient experience. Well-designed user guides and helpdesk services available at any time have also become best practice, to be referred to or contacted in case of need.
With multiple modes of remote eCOA data collection available for a single study, there are new risks related to data quality. Remote data collection through ePROs and eDiaries increase the volume of unsupervised data collected. As data is collected out of sight by study staff, controls must be put in place to guarantee data quality. As the way the data is collected can introduce biases in the data set, different modes of collection outside of the original intended use can generate unanticipated audit findings and greater users and data collection modes requires more traceability requirements.
Work with Experienced Teams
Risks related to data quality can be mitigated by experienced teams:
Reinforce the Audit Trails
Data quality risks will also be mitigated if teams fortify the audit trails. Appropriate variables to the audit trail can be introduced, such as:
To enhance data quality and integrity, capture the reason for missing data. Use a solution that allows for reinforcement of the audit trailing system. This results in appropriate sub-analysis and ensures necessary audit trail reviews are performed, maintaining data integrity.
New risks related to data privacy are also associated with multiple modes of remote eCOA data collection:
It is pertinent to identify the relevant data privacy risks to determine technical options available to mitigate those risks and secure data privacy:
The shift to data collection at home and the rising practice of hybrid operating models that combine multiple ways of collecting data generate new risks. Strong technology combined with expertise and insightful decision making is necessary to implement the relevant strategies and preventative actions to mitigate those risks. Steps taken to secure these risks will safeguard both the quality and the privacy of the data study patients take the time to collect.
Learn more:
In this first episode on pediatric clinical trial challenges, Begoña Nafria, pediatrician and patient engagement
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Last update : 14 March 2023