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Adoption of Electronic Forms and Mobile Technology to Improve Data Quality in Clinical Trials

Kelvin Onoka

Clinical trials play an important role in the life cycle of drug development, timely and accurate data is very critical. Despite the high coverage of a smartphone and android powered tablets all over the world, mobile technology is yet to be used up to its full potential in clinical trials due to issues like participant’s data is security and safety among other issues. The success of clinical trials is highly dependent on effective patient recruitment, engagement and protection of their rights. Data collected from subjects or patients during the course of a clinical trial is critical to determine the safety and efficacy of a drug, hence accurate real-time data is very important. The integration of web based and mobile technology in clinical trials can offer capabilities to collect continuous and accurate data in real time. The application of mobile technology can also decrease patient and investigator burden by reducing clinic visits, which may lead to increased patient recruitment and decreased loss to follow up of participants. The other advantage is that it is easy to share research information with various stakeholders making it possible to monitor research progress remotely. In addition, mobile technology offers an opportunity to potentially reduce the overall costs of performing clinical trials unlike traditionally paper based system which is manual, bulky and expensive. The adoption of electronic forms and mobile technology practices can increase the quality and efficiency of clinical trials activities. This paper reviews some challenges that should be addressed for successful implementation of mobile technology and electronic data capture in clinical trials research.