Over the past several years, decentralized trials have become more common (due to both the pandemic and improvements in support technologies). This trend isn’t going away anytime soon. However, while the landscape is continuing to shift in favor of DCT, a new survey from Florence Healthcare has found that many CROs don’t currently have the technology to accommodate this shift.
Three Criteria for High-Performing Decentralized Trial Technology
System Ease-of-Use
One straightforward takeaway from this research: Sites expect the trial sponsors to supply them with the technology and tools they need to complete the decentralized trial. This includes everything from patient recruitment and engagement, to data collection and analysis, to safety and compliance oversight. And it’s not just the tech itself that needs to be user-friendly. The entire system should be designed with ease of use in mind – for both sites and patients.
While hands-on experimentation is critical to determining a system’s ease of use, there are a couple of standard functions and design aesthetics that you can look for when evaluating a system’s user-friendliness during a demo or trial:
The application lives on the cloud.
Function and navigation are intuitively designed.
Urgent tasks and critical pieces of new information are easy to find.
The easier your technology’s ease of use, the more likely you are to ensure adoption from your trial sites.
Data Security & Privacy
With decentralized trials comes an increased need for data security and privacy. After all, decentralized trials are spread across multiple locations by definition, and, as such, so is the data they collect. This makes it even more critical for CROs to come into any decentralized trial with a secure, centralized platform for data collection and management.
To be prepared for the growing future of decentralized trials, be sure your CRO’s technologies include the following:
Role-based and individual access permission settings.
Platform and system integrations to help mitigate data leakage or loss.
Comprehensive security features (including 2FA).
Flexibility & Scalability
Finally, it’s vital to ensure your CRO is equipped with software that is both flexible and scalable. The right tool should help to improve your CRO’s speed, efficiency, and efficacy of your decentralized trial.
We built The Cloud Concinnity platform to provide CROs with a platform they can use to create stronger partnerships. With Cloud Concinnity, your team can more easily:
Communicate & collaborate seamlessly with DCT sponsors and committees.
Standardize and provide communications/reports to executive and sponsor management.
Replace labor-intensive manual processes with new automated workflows.
The Future of Decentralized Trials
There’s no doubt about it: decentralized trials are here to stay. Decentralized clinical trials have the potential to revolutionize the way clinical trials are conducted. By providing personalized care and collecting data more efficiently, they can help bring new treatments to patients faster and improve the overall efficiency of the clinical trial process. And while they come with some unique challenges, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Ensure your CRO is prepared to capitalize on this new tomorrow by investing in scalable, robust, secure technologies that can empower your sites and improve your partnerships.
Want to learn more about how Cloud Concinnity can empower your CRO for the future? Schedule your platform demo today.