The BYOD revolution: How mobile devices are reshaping clinical trials

With increasing demands for patient recruitment and engagement and the increasing popularity of paperless trials, global pharmaceutical and biotech companies are widely adopting mobile devices throughout the clinical development process. The “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend has significantly reduced the cost of clinical trials by speeding communication and improving data reliability. Looking to the future, BYOD has the potential to revolutionize many areas of clinical development, including subject recruitment and screening, patient payment, clinical evaluation, data collection, and data analysis.

New challenges brought by BYOD

Although BYOD brings many benefits, its novelty also brings challenges. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued multiple versions of the "Mobile Medical Application Guidelines", and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) has also developed good research practice guidelines for clinical outcome assessments (COA) and electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO). These regulations provide guidance for the use of mobile devices in clinical trials, but also bring challenges to the electronic adaptation and localization of traditional paper content.

Additionally, in global studies, an increasing number of non-U.S. participants are using smartphones to schedule appointments, set medication reminders, or monitor blood sugar. This trend reduces direct involvement at the study site and requires ensuring that foreign language content is not only linguistically accurate but also functionally functional.

Localization: ensuring a consistent user experience across languages

Localizing an application from one language to another directly affects the user interface design. For mobile interfaces, this effect is particularly significant due to limited space. Issues such as changes in text length, line breaks, button and link position adjustments, and image layout all require special attention.

Therefore, it is crucial to pass post-localization testing by native language experts before your app is released. These tests identify and resolve functional issues, ensuring a seamless end-user experience.

The hope and future brought by BYOD

Although pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies are still facing pressure to recruit, monitor and increase participation of subjects, the popularity of BYOD provides a silver lining to these challenges. By implementing best practices in the localization process, companies in the life sciences field can ensure the integrity of data and the reliability of trial results. This will not only help increase the long-term adoption rate of electronic devices, but also promote a more efficient and global clinical development model.

The future of BYOD is full of potential, and leveraging this trend and addressing its challenges will help the industry move faster toward a digital future.

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