Pittsburgh-based Invivodata, the pioneer of hand-held, electronic diaries for patients to report their daily experiences during clinical trials, added a new platform to its product line this year: an electronic tablet that makes it easier for patients to complete in-office questionnaires and report changes in quality of life and other more subjective self-assessments.
Although the privately-held company does not release sales information, a company spokesperson said that the platform, called SitePRO Tablet, is meeting a demand among a large group of customers for a more user-friendly platform to support the software program ePRO Solutions, which was introduced in 2004 without a customized hand-held platform.
“50 percent of all studies conducted include site-based ePRO data,” Christine Tobin, sales and marketing director, says. “As far as adoption goes, currently 5 percent of that data is collected electronically, so there is tremendous opportunity for SitePRO Tablet.”
The new tablet, which has a 12-inch screen, allows patients and clinicians to view and easily complete periodic surveys that give trial sponsors more comprehensive views of patient experience.
“Since its introduction earlier this year, the tablet has really started to take off,” business development representative Chris Vogel says.
Lighter than but similar in size to a small laptop computer, the tablet expands the company’s line of portable devices for registering real-time information reported by patients. The company’s devices and software to support them are in use for clinical trials being conducted worldwide by pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.
Recognized as a more reliable means of capturing patient reports, electronic diaries, first introduced to the market by Invivodata in 1984, have become widely preferred to paper and pencil diaries, which were long used by patients to report day to day experiences with new medicines and devices. Invivodata’s palm-sized devices were the first such platforms ever to be used to capture all patient reports for a clinical trial.
With its success, the company has expanded at its headquarters in Pittsburgh, and added a development center in Scotts Valley, California, and international headquarters in London.
Source: Invivodata, Christine Tobin, Chris Vogel
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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