How to Overcome the Problem of the Early ePRO Oversell

Does this sound familiar? You implemented ePRO during the pandemic, or maybe even before it, and were excited by the promise of better participant engagement, increased participant compliance, and greater efficiency. Yet, the reality did not live up to the hype.

While your vendor promised you a straightforward implementation, you found the actual process to be overly complicated, time-consuming, costly, and frustrating. You did not realize the expected benefits of ePRO, and maybe you have even reverted back to paper processes or are only using ePRO for your most complex studies.

Yet, in today’s environment, you also know that you need to reconsider your approach to PROs, given increasing regulations and trial scrutiny, the clinical need for patient-reported outcomes, and the ability to drive costs down and move off paper.

The Early ePRO Oversell

Unfortunately, you experienced what I’ve come to call “the early ePRO oversell.”  Through no fault of your own, a vendor dangled an amazing promise in front of you that they did not have the ePro technology or experience to fulfill. No matter what you did, their software system could not deliver.

Let’s go back in time to before your early ePRO experience. Consider why you sought to migrate from paper PRO collection to ePRO. The potential benefits were significant including reduced costs, improved outcomes, increased participant compliance, improved regulatory compliance, and the list goes on. The good news is all those benefits are still possible.

ePRO wasn’t the problem.

The challenges that you experienced were not caused by ePRO but rather by the specific ePro technology that was selected. There are many ePRO technologies out there that were simply designed for the trials of yesterday. These technologies were not developed to meet the agility required in today’s studies and are not integrated with your EDC enabling you to track and react in real-time to participant data.

Overly complex, these ePRO technologies require custom coding and extended implementation timelines and often result in unplanned study delays, increased costs, and lower participant satisfaction and compliance.

Beyond the ePro technology challenges, the “Early ePRO Oversell” can also appear when the vendor lacks real-world ePRO implementation experience or does not offer a depth of customer support to guide you through operationalizing ePRO with your unique protocol design. This can increase staff frustration and even lead to questions about the quality and viability of the data.

There is a better path forward.

If concerns about the potential pain of change or lingering disappointment from an earlier implementation of ePRO have prevented you from taking a fresh look at an ePRO partner, Medrio is here to support you.

As regulators, advocates and participants themselves push for more patient-centric study designs and outcomes data, paper PROs lose their viability. The Medrio team can provide industry and therapeutic area expertise to deliver technology that’s in line with your endpoint strategy, best practices, and the latest regulations.

We provide support and guidance that help your trials move faster while delivering the highest quality data. Medrio has a legacy of being first to market with a cloud-based configurable EDC, and we are transforming ePRO by delivering both agile, intuitive technology and high-touch support to help you fully realize all the advantages of ePRO.

Our highly configurable technology allows us to deliver a finished product to you in as little as four weeks. Participants can complete web-based diaries anywhere, using whatever device they’re most comfortable with. Customers who use our ePRO technology have experienced better participant engagement and compliance, higher quality data, and greater oversight of participant safety.

Breathe a sigh of relief when you discover that the best and easiest option for change equips your company to succeed today and grow into a hybrid future.

Learn more about Medrio ePRO or request a demo to see how it works.

Subscribe to our mailing list

Sign up to have our latest insights delivered to your inbox.

Related Resources

Enter a topic, term or keyword below:

Subscribe to our mailing list

Sign up to have our the latest insights delivered to your inbox.