Improving Access to Patient-Focused, Decentralized Clinical Trials Requires Streamlined Regulatory Requirements: An ASCO Research Statement.

Strategies to bring clinical trials closer to patients gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling more participants to receive treatment and/or testing in their local communities. Incorporation of decentralized trial elements presents both opportunities and challenges, spanning regulatory, technical, and operational aspects. This ASCO research statement includes timely consensus-driven recommendations and a call for engagement of all research stakeholders. ASCO held multistakeholder meetings with leaders in oncology research and concluded that research-related regulatory and administrative requirements and burdens present critical barriers to decentralizing trials. One example is sponsor and contract research organization (CRO) use of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Statement of Investigator (Form 1572), which was found to exceed FDA's stated intent and used in conservative ways disproportionate to potential risks to participants and scientific integrity. As a result, research sites experience an avalanche of downstream administrative and regulatory activities that consume considerable resources. This statement recommends four key solutions to address such barriers and recalibrate regulatory and administrative expectations for decentralizing trials: (1) FDA should engage the research community in a public-private partnership to modernize standards and enable local access to trials; (2) sponsors and CROs should develop standards and protocols that accommodate flexible approaches, enable local participation, provide clarity around roles and requirements, and promote consistency; (3) research centers, networks, and sites should update policies and procedures to implement decentralized trial elements; and (4) research community should develop a streamlined, uniform mechanism to simplify regulatory data collection and documentation and use it consistently across trials. We can and must prioritize a concerted commitment to simplify and streamline regulatory requirements and practices to broaden access to and participation in cancer clinical trials.

Data silos are undermining drug development and failing rare disease patients.

Data silos are proliferating while research and development activity explode following genetic and immunological advances for many clinically described disorders with previously unknown etiologies. The latter event has inspired optimism in the patient, clinical, and research communities that disease-specific treatments are on the way. However, we fear the tendency of various stakeholders to balkanize databases in proprietary formats, driven by current economic and academic incentives, will inevitably fragment the expanding knowledge base and undermine current and future research efforts to develop much-needed treatments. The proliferation of proprietary databases, compounded by a paucity of meaningful outcome measures and/or good natural history data, slows our ability to generate scalable solutions to benefit chronically underserved patient populations in ways that would translate to more common diseases. The current research and development landscape sets too many projects up for unnecessary failure, particularly in the rare disease sphere, and does a grave disservice to highly vulnerable patients. This system also encourages the collection of redundant data in uncoordinated parallel studies and registries to ultimately delay or deny potential treatments for ostensibly tractable diseases; it also promotes the waste of precious time, energy, and resources. Groups at the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration have started programs to address these issues. However, we and many others feel there should be significantly more discussion of how to coordinate and scale registry efforts. Such discourse aims to reduce needless complexity and duplication of efforts, as well as promote a pre-competitive knowledge ecosystem for rare disease drug development that cultivates and accelerates innovation.

Does scrolling affect measurement equivalence of electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROM)? Results of a quantitative equivalence study.

BACKGROUND: Scrolling is a perceived barrier in the use of bring your own device (BYOD) to capture electronic patient reported outcomes (ePROs). This study explored the impact of scrolling on the measurement equivalence of electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROMs) in the presence and absence of scrolling. METHODS: Adult participants with a chronic condition involving daily pain completed ePROMs on four devices with different scrolling properties: a large provisioned device not requiring scrolling; two provisioned devices requiring scrolling - one with a "smart-scrolling" feature that disabled the "next" button until all information was viewed, and a second without this feature; and BYOD with smart-scrolling. The ePROMs included were the SF-12, EQ-5D-5L, and three pain measures: a visual analogue scale, a numeric response scale and a Likert scale. Participants completed English or Spanish versions according to their first language. Associations between ePROM scores were assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), with lower bound of 95% confidence interval (CI) > 0.7 indicating comparability. RESULTS: One hundred fifteen English- or Spanish-speaking participants (21-75y) completed all four administrations. High associations between scrolling and non-scrolling were observed (ICCs: 0.71-0.96). The equivalence threshold was met for all but one SF-12 domain score (bodily pain; lower 95% CI: 0.65) and two EQ-5D-5L item scores (pain/discomfort, usual activities; lower 95% CI: 0.64/0.67). Age, language, and device size produced insignificant differences in scores. CONCLUSIONS: The measurement properties of PROMs are preserved even in the presence of scrolling on a handheld device. Further studies that assess scrolling impact over long-term, repeated use are recommended.

Optimizing the leveraging of real-world data to improve the development and use of medicines.

Health research, including health outcomes and comparative effectiveness research, is on the cusp of a golden era of access to digitized real-world data, catalyzed by the adoption of electronic health records and the integration of clinical and biological information with other data. This era promises more robust insights into what works in health care. Several barriers, however, will need to be addressed if the full potential of these new data are fully realized; these will involve both policy solutions and stakeholder cooperation. Although a number of these issues have been widely discussed, we focus on the one we believe is the most important-the facilitation of greater openness among public and private stakeholders to collaboration, connecting information and data sharing, with the goal of making robust and complete data accessible to all researchers. In this way, we can better understand the consequences of health care delivery, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care systems, and develop advancements in health technologies. Early real-world data initiatives illustrate both potential and the need for future progress, as well as the essential role of collaboration and data sharing. Health policies critical to progress will include those that promote open source data standards, expand access to the data, increase data capture and connectivity, and facilitate communication of findings.

Web-based trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of tolterodine ER 4 mg in participants with overactive bladder: REMOTE trial.

INTRODUCTION: Participatory patient-centered, web-based methods could streamline and improve the convenience of clinical trial participation. We used an entirely web-based approach to conduct a randomized, placebo-controlled, Phase 4 (REMOTE) trial under an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to evaluate tolterodine extended release (ER) 4 mg for overactive bladder. METHODS: The trial was designed to replicate previous clinic-based trials of tolterodine ER but was conducted via the web from one clinical site overseen by physicians. Participants were recruited via the web, screened for eligibility using web-based questionnaires, had laboratory testing in their community, and entered a run-in phase requiring bladder e-diaries. Informed consent was obtained using an interactive web-based method with physician countersignature. Study medication was shipped directly to participants. RESULTS: With a goal of 283 randomized participants, 5157 registered on the trial website. Of 456 who passed initial screening, identification verification, and signed consent, 237 passed additional medical screening and were countersigned by the investigator. After laboratory testing, 118 entered the placebo run-in; only 18 passed e-diary assessments and were randomized to treatment. At week 12, the mean change from the baseline in micturitions/24 hours (primary endpoint) was -2.4 for tolterodine ER versus -0.8 for placebo [treatment difference (95% CI): -1.6 (-3.9, 0.6)]. CONCLUSION: The REMOTE trial is the first entirely web-based trial conducted under an IND application. The efficacy observed was consistent with results from conventional trials. With simplification of multi-step screening and testing, web-based trials or their component parts should provide a participant-friendly approach to many clinical trials.