Electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) evaluates the overall patient symptoms, mental or physical conditions, and the effects or progression of a disease. The eCOAs offer numerous advantages over conventional pen-and-paper assessment methods. They help reduce data mishandling risks, minimize administrative burden, provide time-stamped records, reduce site monitoring costs, and prevent secondary data entry errors. Electronic solutions for clinical data capturing and analysis increase patient compliance, facilitate data collection procedures, offer streamlined patient information, improve data quality, provide real-time access to data monitoring, improve patient engagement, and enhance clinical studies’ accuracy.
The eCOA solutions can be primarily categorized into web-hosted, cloud-based, and on-premise eCOA solutions. The web-hosted eCOA solutions, which provide clinicians with higher compatibility, is the leading market segment in terms of delivery mode. These solutions are easy to operate, aid in the better administration of clinical trials, and provide faster results. Kayentis, CRF Health, and ERT Solutions are some of the leading companies offering web-hosted eCOA solutions. The different eCOA approaches include patient-reported outcomes (PROs), clinician-reported outcomes (ClinROs), observer-reported outcomes (ObsROs), and performance-related outcomes. PROs and ClinROs are mostly used in cases of schizophrenia to improve clinical diagnosis and treatment. However, observer-reported outcomes provide useful insights into the observable symptoms and functioning levels in people with schizophrenia. Computers, smartphones, tablets, and telephone systems are the standard electronic methods for clinical data collection and assessment. While many companies partner with eCOA vendors to provide efficient eCOA solutions for clinical studies, various others are exploring BYOD (bring your own device) strategies to cut down on costs. Pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, contract research organizations (CROs), hospitals, and various research institutes and academia are the main end-users of electronic clinical outcome assessment systems.
The global electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) solutions market growth can be attributed to a slew of factors, such as the burgeoning need for enhanced data collection and standardization, growing number of clinical research institutes worldwide, increasing practices of research outsourcing, and the rapid shift from manual data interpretation to real-time data assessment. Increasing R&D investments by pharmaceutical companies, increasing patient pool, technological innovations, and a favorable regulatory environment for the pharmaceuticals industry encouraging the adoption of eCOA solution are the other key parameters triggering the global market growth.
The leading contenders in the global electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) solutions market include ERT, AssisTek, Kayentis Medidata Solution, Inc., Omincomm Systems, Inc., Oracle Corporation, Bioclinica, eClinical Solutions, Clinical Ink, CRF Bracket Company, Aris Global, Paraxel International Corporation, YPrime, Inc., and Merge Healthcare Solution, Inc. The globally leading clinical technology company, ERT, partnered with Australia-based Cogstate in July 2020 to expand its portfolio of eCOA solutions for high-fidelity digital cognitive assessments. Furthermore, AssisTek, a leading provider of electronic patient-reported outcomes, launched its enhanced web-hosted eCOA solution in April 2020. The new solution is intended to support remote patient data collection, especially in times of COVID-19.
