Background and aim:
Proponents of decentralized trials say the pandemic may serve as a crucial tipping point. The trend is irreversible. There is a transition happening in the field on a global level.
The change is unlikely to happen overnight or in a wholesale fashion. Instead, pharmaceutical companies will incorporate digital health approaches gradually to support specific aspects of their studies — by mixing in telemedicine visits, for example, or enrolling and consenting patients online.
Remote monitoring tools used to measure patients’ responses to treatment at home are also becoming more effective, pointing toward a future where visits to bricks-and-mortar clinics can be curtailed or, in some cases, eliminated entirely. But that would require the creation of standards across devices
that measure biometric data differently, even for something as simple as step counts.
Ref: STAT
