Affiliation:
1. Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy Harvard University Cambridge Massachusetts USA
2. Harvard Business School & Harvard‐MIT Center for Regulatory Science Boston Massachusetts USA
3. Digital Health Cluster Hasso Plattner Institute Potsdam 14482 Germany
Abstract
Digital health technologies (DHTs) can enable more patient‐centric therapeutic development by generating evidence that captures how patients feel and function, enabling decentralized trial designs that increase participant inclusivity and convenience, and collecting and structuring patient‐generated data for regulators to use in approval decisions alongside traditional clinical outcomes. Although a growing body of evidence has documented increasing use of DHTs in clinical trials overall, the use of DHTs in clinical trials supporting medical product development is unclear; here, we quantify the use of DHTs in clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical and medical device firms. Despite interest from pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers in DHTs, we find tepid uptake of DHTs in trials by these sponsor types over time. Further, to date, these sponsors have most frequently used conventional, hardware‐based technologies that have been available for many years (e.g., Holter monitors and glucose meters) rather than newer activity monitors, mobile apps, and other online‐based tools that are frequently used by non‐industry sponsors. Considering the recent and evolving nature of regulatory guidance around DHT use in clinical trials, our findings suggest that organizations pursuing product development still appear hesitant to incorporate DHTs in trials that provide the most critical evidence for regulatory review and impact how new products are used. This suggests there are likely additional opportunities for sponsors of regulated trials to incorporate (more) DHTs and patient‐centric endpoints into product development clinical trials. However, additional regulatory clarity and efforts to reduce operational barriers may be needed in order to more fully capture these opportunities.
Subject
Pharmacology (medical),Pharmacology
Reference21 articles.
1. US Food and Drug Administration.Focus Area: Digital Health Technologies. Department of Health and Human Services (2022).
2. Quantifying the use of connected digital products in clinical research
3. Evidence from ClinicalTrials.gov on the growth of Digital Health Technologies in neurology trials
4. “DiMe Sponsors”.The Digital Medicine Society (2023). Accessed November 7 2023.
5. “CTTI Membership”.Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (2023). Accessed November 7 2023.