News|Articles|September 22, 2023

DPHARM 2023: The Evolutionary Impact of Mobile Devices on eCOA/ePRO

Steve Rosenberg, CEO, uMotif, discusses how patients would like to be involved in clinical trials as innovations in digital technologies continue to evolve.

In this session at DPHARM 2023, Steve Rosenberg, CEO, uMotif, offered insights on the constantly improving innovations in digital technology and how it related to clinical trial patients.

Rosenberg launched into the session with a brief background on joining uMotif. After initially retiring in 2020, he rejoined the workforce to run Motif after a couple of months on its board. He then began with his thoughts on handheld technology.

“The evolution of handheld technology is something new that’s represented by the type of proposal proposed with all these new apps and capabilities,” Rosenberg stated. “Back when PHT was a pioneer, it basically had to use paper instruments for being validated from the screen, and that’s when we started out. That’s still what the state of most of the product is today, you have this validated sticker on your device or tablet, and you get the patients to fill that out.”

When the team was formed a decade ago, they initially wanted to help patients record and share their health with the doctor. However, they soon realized that in order to achieve success, it would have to be through the patient’s device. “It had to compete with Instagram and Twitter,” explained Rosenberg. “I pick up my phone eight times a day and what do I do? I check the apps and email, maybe even a lot of stupid pet videos. That was something they had to compete with.”

As a result, uMotif came up with a new user interface for patients to answer questionnaires where they simply slide to the next question on their phone.

Rosenberg summed up his presentation with opportunities for the future. “80% of studies with patient reports, only half of them are electronic with a lot of them still on paper,” he stated. “There’s an opportunity here to take the current paper and make a patient experience that takes advantage of their device that they use every single day.”

Reference

The Evolutionary Impact of Mobile Devices on eCOA/ePRO. September 21, 2023. DPHARM 2023, Boston.

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