Interactive voice response increasingly seen as preferable to hand held devices for patient data collection services, says promoter of the system
Trial sponsors are rapidly turning to the most reliable and cost effective medium on the market for gathering patient diary information - interactive voice response (IVR).
That's the verdict of clinical technology oranisation ClinPhone, which has recently commenced work on its 40th clinical trial delivering IVR-based patient reported outcomes and assessments.
This latest landmark underlines the technology as the most prevalent single platform for electronic patient diary studies.
Further, the acquisition of the exclusive commercial rights to Healthcare Technology Systems's validated assessments gives ClinPhone experience and knowledge of more than 90 additional studies involving electronic patient diaries.
More and more pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are opting for these IVR-based patient data collection services ahead of hand held devices.
With paper-based diaries becoming a thing of the past, ClinPhone believes its technology will become the industry benchmark, as it has in other areas.
"Due to its unparalleled success in the area, IVR has become synonymous with randomisation and trial supply management, and it is interesting that many analysts and sponsors do not immediately associate electronic patient diaries with IVR technology.
"Many consider only PDA-type handheld devices, tablet PCs and desktop computers," commented ClinPhone director of marketing and business development Patrick Hughes.
"However, the bare facts and statistics suggest IVR technology is rapidly becoming the mainstream method for clinical assessments and diaries." New analysis being carried out in the clinical trials industry suggests that the use of modern technologies for patient diary applications will surge in growth over the next few years.
Market analysts estimate that 25-30% of all current clinical trials currently use a paper-based diary system.
And they say that by 2007, around a quarter of these will be based on electronic technology.
ClinPhone believes most of these will use IVR technology, the most reliable and user-friendly technology. "We have already supported as many electronic diary studies as most of the vendors who focus solely on this technology," added Hughes.
"That's because IVR is versatile and can be used for a variety of applications, including symptom assessment, quality of life measurement and health economic data collection.
More complex instruments can also be delivered including those measuring, for example, cognitive function testing or rating the severity of psychiatric illness. "Unlike other electronic patient diary devices, IVR can also be used pre-study in conjunction with recruitment advertising campaigns to collect patient-recorded data to determine study qualification and eligibility."
