"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.
LEARN MORE
Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.
Research & Development Overview
Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.
REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW
Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.
COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEW
Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.
COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW
When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.
TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEWExplore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.
DISCOVER INSIGHTSAn in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.
SEE LATEST REPORTS
By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.
LEARN MORE
Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.
LEARN MORE
Your new expert analyst is here. Be at the forefront of data-driven decision-making with a new generative AI tool that enables you to interact with our products and solutions like never before. Get results you can trust, faster.
LEARN MORE
The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.
LEARN MORE
The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.
LEARN MORE
IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.
LEARN MORE
Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm.
LEARN MORE
"At IQVIA your potential has no limits. We thrive on bold ideas and fearless innovation. Join us in reimagining what’s possible.
VIEW ROLESA complex trial landscape
Clinical trials focused on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) face several unique challenges, ranging from intricate study designs and numerous endpoints to increased site staff involvement and lengthy study duration. The chronic nature of RA and participants’ subjective pain experiences also raise the intricacy of these types of trials. Collecting input from patients on their pain levels, as well as clinicians’ assessment of disease activity, is critical to study success.
These demands often result in high volumes of electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) and clinician-reported outcomes (ClinROs). In this context, electronic clinical outcome assessments (eCOAs) are vital instruments for collecting accurate, high-quality data and improving the site and patient experience during the trial. In this blog, we’ll examine the application of eCOAs in RA clinical trials, highlighting the impact on study conduct, outcomes and participant experience.
Driving data accuracy and consistency across RA trials
A key objective and endpoint in these studies is the ACR (American College of Rheumatology) index, which is represented by a composite of several metrics used to measure disease progression and treatment effectiveness over time. Primary among these measures is the tender and swollen joint count (TSJC), for which a clinician evaluates a patient according to 68 individual joints in the body.
Providing clinical sites, sponsors and medical monitoring groups visibility into TSJC scores over time is paramount to the success of these studies. To improve the reliability and efficiency of these scores, we have developed an easy-to-use digital interface that automatically calculates the TSJC following a clinician’s input. Data points are captured in a way that aligns with the workflow associated with how clinicians typically perform the examination. This saves time and effort and alleviates site burden by removing unnecessary workflow steps while ensuring data accuracy. Furthermore, custom reports are available to sites and study teams to provide visibility into scores across visits. These reports are intended to support clinical decisions around eligibility and disease progression at key timepoints.
Driving consistency across trial sites is also vital to trial success. IQVIA experts are available to support the development of comprehensive, study-specific training designed to ensure clinicians are evaluating patients and completing ClinROs in a consistent manner across sites.
Partnering with sponsors to meet RA challenges
At IQVIA, we bring decades of deep experience in supporting sponsors, sites and patients in rheumatology studies. We continue to work with sponsors at the earliest RA trial stages to understand their needs and meet these challenges, ultimately helping them offer therapies to patients more quickly. These collaborations have shaped our eCOA platform into a solution tailored to the needs of RA trials, focused on usability, accessibility and operational fit.
Key features of our eCOA include:
A leading eCOA solution that ensures results
IQVIA continues to be a trusted partner and advisor in RA trials. From 2016 to 2023, every approved rheumatology drug involved our expertise, including those for RA. We provide sponsors with end-to-end solutions that fully capture vital patient experience data, ultimately contributing to the success of these trials.
Specifically, implementing the IQVIA eCOA solution in RA studies yields significant benefits:
Looking to a future of continuing innovation
As RA research evolves, so does our commitment to delivering technology that works for everyone — sponsors, sites and patients. We remain focused on improving data quality, access and timeliness. Our eCOA team keeps improving RA trial experiences and study outcomes. Our commitment to innovation is designed to simplify clinical trial execution and accelerate the delivery of better therapies to patients who need them most.
To learn more about how IQVIA eCOA can improve patient outcomes in your next RA trial, please contact us today.
Fast, flexible and proven, IQVIA’s industry-leading electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA) platform ramps up efficiencies, delivers real-time data, and sharpens insights through best-in-class technology and a better patient experience.
