WITHDRAWN: Country Differences in ePRO BYOD App Uptake: Learnings from Live Studies

OBJECTIVES: There is growing uptake in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approaches for collection of electronic patient reported outcomes (ePRO) data in clinical trials. Perceived benefits include patient convenience, preference, familiarity and cost. Because regulators stress the importance of not introducing socio-economic bias by limiting participation to smartphone ownership, researchers routinely plan to provide provisioned devices (PDs) to those unable or unwilling to use their own. This research examines BYOD uptake rates across a range of countries in a number of ongoing large BYOD ePRO studies, with the aim to better understand BYOD uptake, and enable associated PD planning activity in global studies.

METHODS: BYOD and PD usage rates were examined across patients recruited into 7 large, live global studies that used an app to collect ePRO data – either downloaded onto the patient’s own Android or iOS smartphone (BYOD), or provided on an Android PD.

RESULTS: Data from 119,282 patients participating in 7 live ePRO studies in 30 countries were included. The overall BYOD update rate was 78.08%. Highest BYOD uptake rates were observed in Denmark (100%), Taiwan (99.18%), Colombia (95.45%), New Zealand (94.68%), South Korea (94.12%), Brazil (92.24%), Poland (91.22%), Japan (90.76%) and Israel (90.24%). Very low uptake rates were seen in Philippines (0%), Thailand (6.18%), South Africa (11.63%), Bulgaria (15.85%) and Russia (27.74%). The BYOD uptake rate in the USA was 82.94%. BYOD uptake was weakly associated with market data on per-country smartphone penetration rates (Pearson’s r=0.302, p=0.11).

CONCLUSIONS: BYOD is an increasingly important approach to the collection of ePRO data in clinical trials. BYOD uptake behaviour varies considerably in different countries and cannot always be predicted from in-country smartphone penetration figures. Knowledge of BYOD uptake behaviour enables researchers to plan PD stock and logistics effectively to ensure participation is not limited to smartphone ownership.