Implementing Digital Technologies in Clinical Trials: Lessons Learned

Multiple digital health technologies have been evaluated across clinical development programs, including external, wearable, implantable, and ingestible devices and sensors, along with digital mobile health applications (apps) that are accessible via users' personal electronic devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and computers). Several of these technologies have been incorporated into our ongoing neurology and respiratory clinical development programs. Based on our experience, one of the greatest potential benefits of digital health technologies is the ability to collect objective and/or biological data continuously or at regular intervals outside of office visits during a patient's normal daily activities to provide additional efficacy and safety information, versus data capture from traditional episodic, time point-based office visits. Many challenges encountered with digital health technologies can be successfully addressed by providing the appropriate training to staff and patients, ensuring availability of appropriate infrastructure support, and conducting pilot studies before scaling up to larger trials. Overall, our experience with digital health technologies demonstrated their potential to increase the amount of objective data collected in clinical trials, expand patient access to trials, and facilitate further improvement of clinical outcomes.