With the rising demand for improving patient safety in clinical trials, the adoption of patient-centric solutions is considered the best route to enhance data accuracy and experience automated workflows. This is where eCOA comes into play. In this blog post, we will find out how electronic clinical outcome assessments are helping the clinical trials industry handle the ever-growing list of patient data and, at the same time, reduce patient burden!
What is eCOA?
Electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) refers to the process of leveraging technology to better capture data and enhanced Clinical Outcome Assessment (COA). Using devices like smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, eCOA allows patients and clinicians to report regular symptomatologie’s directly into a cloud system. It records the patient’s body functioning, alerts them to make a diary entry, and improves the understanding of the patient’s experience. Moreover, it also measures the efficacy of a health intervention conducted by CROs worldwide. .
eCOA system technologies are often used by clinical trial patients to remotely send Electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) experience and symptoms directly to site staff. s Data gathered by an ePRO include patient-provided information about symptoms, side effects, drug timing, and questions during the clinical trial that can be tracked on any electronic device.
According to a recent study published on the Data Bridge Market Research website, the Global Electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) market is projected to grow 16.30% from 2022 to 2029, to a whopping $4.08 billion, thanks to the enhanced protocol adherence, lowered trial risks and assured patient safety and participation that eCOA has to offer.
As a drug enters the market, it is imperative to understand how they impact patients and their health profiles. eCOA tracks health behaviours like information on exercise, smoking, and drinking. It assesses patients’ responses to monitor health behaviours over time. Let’s find out the top advantages of using eCOA in conjunction with quantitive clinical data to determine patients’ experience with a disease and treatment more accurately.
Improved Patient Experience
The use of eCOA has been proven to refine site and user compliance. The patient-centric approach of eCOA provides flexibility to participants to complete their from anywhere, whether at home or from a clinic. It builds efficiencies and creates avenues for time, resources, and cost optimization. Voluminous clinical trial data gets efficiently gathered with eCOA. The following pointers lay further emphasis on the user-friendliness and personalised experience that eCOA has to offer clinical trial patients.
- The communication between patients and clinical staff increases through eCOA, resulting in more patients reporting regular events.
- Patients and healthcare workers can consistently and accurately record observations. The patient stays motivated and engaged with the clinical trial consistently, leading to better data gathering.
- Patient adherence. The electronic time stamping in eCOA removes doubt over adherence to a planned schedule and encourages the user to complete it on time. Patients cannot skip questions or enter inconsistent or conflicting information.
- It makes studies more accessible for patients living far away from traditional academic study centres and participants with other life circumstances that make frequent clinic visits challenging.
- eCOA ensures that every patient faces the same questions in the same sequence at every visit without bias, leniency, variation, interpretation, or mood.
Enhanced clinical Data Quality.
Thanks to eCOA, monitoring of eClinical data is just a click away. The intrinsic benefits of digitization abound with eCOA can allow you to time stamp confidential data to easily track daily patient diaries. Check out the following list of advantages to get a deeper insight into how the eCOA platform has been helping CROs cut down the middlemen by working with translators directly, create agile study development models enjoy rapid deployment using a pre-built library to enhance patientricity.
- eCOA Meets Global Regulatory Standard. It is Attributable, Legible, Contemporaneous, Original, and Accurate (ALCOA) and accepted by regulatory agencies.
- Each user in the electronic report system has a unique ID. It maintains data confidentiality and indicates the completion of the questionnaire. Password protection further keeps patients’ confidentiality intact. Automated servers and electronic backup systems keep data secure and allow an automatic audit trail within the electronic system.
- They have reduced human error. Logical checks and real-time editing reduces erroneous data. Illegible handwriting or contradictory responses are eliminated. This reduces human error.
- eCOA Eliminates Transcription Errors. eDiaries are part of eCOA and capture data directly into the trial management system. Data quality is monitored in real-time at the data input stage, eliminating the need for repetition.
- eCOA also enables accurate timestamping and meets audit requirements.
eCOAs electronic system that comes along with automatic calculation of diagnostic scores and reassured indication of red flags if there is a decline in the scores, has been making its mark in the clinical trials sector. The improved data collection, and reduction in variable endpoint parameters which has made way for eCOA to rise as the statistical power in the eClinical domain. You can execute clinical studies by enrolling fewer patients, which can ultimately promote tremendous cost savings.
The above features are evident in several clinical studies conducted so far. Clinion eCOA effortlessly extends support to the patient’s homes while maintaining Data Integrity and Safety. eCOA can be easily integrated with the clinical trial management systems, backed by our support team at Clinion which ensures a smooth and easy transition.