Leveraging eCOA Technologies to Create Greater Patient Centricity

ACT: How can sponsors leverage electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) technologies to facilitate the collection and management of patient-reported outcomes (PROs)? How does this contribute to a more patient-centric approach?

Birchard: I am actually such a big fan of ePROs. I've been working in the clinical trial industry for eight, nine years now, because after graduate school, I was focusing on patient-centric research design, and I really wanted to find a space where that was happening, and in the clinical trial space, especially in the ePRO space, was where I saw the most influential work being done—incorporating patient and caregiver knowledge as a crucial part of science and understanding knowledge as both live knowledge and scientific knowledge. It was really exciting for me to get into this space. I always say I'm a patient first. That's why I got into this industry.

Patient-reported outcomes allow patients to report symptoms at home, they allow patients a lot more convenience and flexibility of how they report symptoms. Also, the biggest part for me is that they actually often, if done right, and in a patient centric way give patients a voice that they're not always granted in in our system. I really strongly believe that ePROs specifically have so much value in the clinical trial industry because, again, they give patients more opportunities to use these tools as a voice and a way to report how we're living with or managing our illnesses. I think that, in itself, is crucial to the conversation of patient centricity and building these tools with patients is also very important.