Title: Use of wireless web services to improve patient compliance in clinical drug trials

Authors: Ju Long, Michael J. Yuan, Andrew B. Whinston, Chun-Su Yuan

Addresses: Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, CBA 5.202, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, T 78712, USA. ' Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, CBA 5.202, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. ' Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, CBA 5.202, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. ' Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, The Pritzker School of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Abstract: Outpatient clinical drug trials and therapies conducted in the patients| natural environments not only drastically reduce clinical trial costs but also make the results more accurate. However, a major challenge in outpatient trials is to monitor the patients and make sure that they are compliant with trial protocols. In this paper, we first discuss why patient compliance is so important in clinical trials and identify two crucial compliance issues: drug dosing compliance and symptom self-report compliance. We suggest that pervasive wireless EDC (Electronic Data Capture) devices powered by web services can potentially provide solutions to those outpatient compliance issues. A wireless front-end architecture based on short-range wireless networks is proposed. Then, we survey current and emerging technologies that could be used to implement such clinical trial information systems. We put special emphases on core technologies including multimodal user interfaces, interoperable back end services and security.

Keywords: wireless technology; web services; clinical trial; patient compliance; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2003.004162

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2003 Vol.5 No.6, pp.394 - 406

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

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