Mobile apps are used in all walks of life and the health industry is no exception. Apps are perfect for sharing data and updating situations quickly. But how can apps help in long and costly clinical trials? There are many ways mobile health (mHealth) can be used with digital technology and wearable health monitors via smartphones and apps, offering new opportunities for testing and speeding up product development.
Recruiting and monitoring patients
Finding the right patients for clinical trials is always a problem. About one in three will drop out for various reasons but better patient engagement could reduce this. Apps such as Clinical Trial Seek and Study Scavenger can capture valuable data and improve patient recruitment. Other apps inform patients about preparing for visits and give feedback on their state of health or lifestyle behaviours. This gives the patients valuable information during the trial stage at all times. Apps also allow for continuous monitoring through electronic data capture which has numerous benefits. EDC enables sponsors to filter out patients who are not sticking to the instructions, as well as quickly identifying any potential side effects. Apps can motivate patients while reducing the need for visiting a clinic, which will make it easier for people to take part.
Benefits of mHealth
Mobile Health is a growing field and so its potential for use in clinical trials should be explored thoroughly. Currently, there are more than 100,000 mHealth apps on the market with the potential to transform healthcare while increasing its quality and efficiency – https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/mhealth. Clinical trials are often the first chance that a company has to connect with people who may be their customers in the future. By using mHealth apps, they gain valuable information about how effective and safe their products are as well as monitoring the progress of the people taking them.
Finding the right clinical staff for trials can also be a problem, particularly if you want to gather the right team of experts together for a particular project. Clinical staffing solutions can be found through specialist companies who have hundreds of experts in different fields on their database, such as http://www.gandlscientific.com/clinical-staffing-solutions/.
With the right team, and using technology which means they are getting objective information rather than relying on subjective data collected from surveys, research can be faster and more effective than before.