Melissa Mooney, director of eCOA Solutions Engineering at IQVIA, explains how successful oncology drug development relies on an accurate depiction of the patient voice, as well as 5 key considerations for developing a patient-centric eCOA strategy.
Key insights:
- Patient reported outcomes (PROs) help enrich understanding of impact of treatments on patient lives, including quality of life.
- Utilising PRO data, from eCOAs, can capture the patient voice without over-burdening the patuent from otherwise repetitive surveys and assessments.
- Remote eCOA data collection provides patients the flexibility to complete assessments from home on days when they cannot make it to site.
When it comes to clinical trials, capturing the patient voice is especially critical for drug development and evaluation. While investigators bring scientific rigor to clinical research, only patients fully understand the impact a treatment has on their lives. Hence, when reviewing oncology treatments, regulators want to see more than just test results and survival metrics. Clinical indications such as tumour size, delayed disease progression, and absence of side effects are excellent measures of a treatment’s impact, but they don’t capture the patient’s experience living with their disease and study treatment – an essential factor when assessing the risks and benefits of a treatment.