Additional possibilities with a ResearchKit mobile app

01 Feb 2016 by Bob

In our first post on using ResearchKit in clinical trials, we looked at the main components of ResearchKit, and the benefits of building a mobile app with it. Now we’ll examine additional possibilities made possible by building a clinical trial app.

Sensor data

Today’s mobile devices have the capability to gather an incredible amount of data. With a mobile ResearchKit app, you would gather this data via the aforementioned HealthKit repository, and via active tasks. Remember that active tasks are a component of ResearchKit that instruct the participant to begin a certain activity while it monitors and records the relevant sensor data. While not relevant to every clinical trial, a large percentage of trials might benefit from this data. Built in sensor data opportunities include:

• Gyroscope and accelerometer for motion detection

• Multi-touch display for tasks involving touch activity

• Microphone for tests involving speech or otherwise reacting to the environment

• GPS for location specific tests

• Pedometer and motion coprocessor for physical activity measurement

• Sensors on Apple Watch for a measure of the heart rate in real time

In addition to the sensors already available on an iPhone/Apple Watch, iOS and HealthKit already support a large number of third party devices for measuring all kinds of supplementary information that could be relevant to your trial.

“We’re talking about trying to change the scale of the amount of data that you can collect. Going from data that might be collected say once every three months, to data that’s collected say once every second.”
- Max Little, PhD Aston University, England

Push notifications

Push notifications encourage engagement with your app, especially when targeted at a specific segment of participants like in a clinical trial. The ability to send push notifications to clinical trial participants provides a wealth of opportunities that wouldn’t be available without a mobile app. Here are just a few ideas for leveraging push notifications:

• New surveys - Need to collect additional data from your participants? Send out a push notification for new surveys weekly, daily, or whatever your needs require, and start getting new data back nearly immediately.

• Diary reminders - Instead of having participants scramble to fill out days or weeks worth of paper diaries, send them automatic reminders when they should be filling out their diary, or encourage them to do so when they are late on an entry.

• Active tasks - If you have included active tasks in your clinical trial, sending participants a reminder to complete their active task for the day is a great usage of notifications.

• Truly informed consent - Informed consent is an ongoing process during a clinical trial, not something that just happens once. If there is new information that you need to share with the participant, send him or her a push notification, and even gather an updated signature if necessary.

Data sharing

Speaking of sharing information, a mobile app offers a great opportunity to put all of the relevant, up-to-date information about a clinical trial at the participant’s fingertips.

Dashboard

Provide the participants with a dashboard that gives them all the latest information about the clinical trial at-a-glance. The dashboard might highlight information like:

• The next scheduled dosage of a medication

• The latest survey they need to complete

• Some of the history of their recently collected data (where appropriate)

• New informed consent data

• Current study results (where appropriate)

• Their next scheduled physical appointment

• Any messages from research team (more on this in an additional post)

Charts

In certain trials it might be appropriate to give the participant detailed information about the history of their data and (probably much more rarely) insight into the current results of the trial. The newest component of ResearchKit, submitted by open source contributors and curated by Apple, is a great looking charting engine.

A good use of charts might be showing the participant the history of one of their survey data points, for example, plotting out their 0-10 rating of shortness of breath over the duration of the study. Or you could simply use it to display to the participant how often they have submitted surveys and completed diaries.

We’ll look at charts in detail in an additional post.

History

Another good bit of data to share via a mobile app might be the history and recent studies done on the condition or disease the trial is addressing. The participant could easily browse and search through articles and journals deemed relevant by the research team, as well as read an overview of their condition and the symptoms, current treatments, and prognosis.

We’ve really only covered a small portion of the possibilities here. In a future post we’ll discuss additional possible functionality:

• Allowing the participants to track when they take their medication

• Private messaging functionality between the participant and the research team

• Allowing the participant to send photos or videos to the research team