Andaman7 is a digital and multi-pathology health platform that offers solutions for healthcare stakeholders in the broadest sense: research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals, doctors, medical laboratories, patient associations and health professionals.
Description
With the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC): Andaman7 collected data as part of an international study on the quality of life of cancer patients (for 40 hospitals, in 10 languages and 10 countries). Digitization of the standard QLQ-C30 questionnaire. This questionnaire is validated by 150 experts from the oncology community and available in 70 languages.
Founded in 1962, the EORTC is an independent, non-profit international cancer research organization. Their mission is to encourage, coordinate and conduct international translational and clinical research to improve the standard of cancer treatment for patients. The ultimate goal is to improve the chances of survival and the quality of life of patients. They do it by testing new therapeutic strategies based on existing drugs, surgery and radiotherapy. The organization also helps develop new drugs and approaches in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry and in patients’ best interests. In addition to its internal expertise, the EORTC has an extensive network of 5300+ scientists and 930+ institutions in 37 countries. To date, more than 250 studies have been conducted.
The Challenge
The objective for EORTC was to be able to collect better quality real world data (RWD), and to collect it more quickly and efficiently.
From a technical point of view, Andaman7 was used to solve the challenge of doing the study in 10 languages and 10 countries. A second challenge was to respect and comply with EORTC quality standards for this type of study (the solution provided by Andaman7 had to be approved by the ethics committees of the 40 hospitals involved in this international study).
Our solution
Andaman7 has formatted and digitized the QLQ-C30 questionnaire to make it easy for patients to enter data using their smartphones. Rather than providing a paper form to the patient, it is accessible via the Andaman7 mobile app and can be easily answered at a time convenient to the patient. This significantly reduces processing time and the risk of transcription errors for EORTC.
The benefits:
- Saving time by eliminating the step of entering responses that is usually done by the research coordinator after a paper form is filled in by the patient (deleting the step of entering the data from the paper version of the forms);
- Reduction in the number of transcription errors thanks to the digital version rather than the paper version.
- Seamless collaboration between three actors thanks to a single tool: the site's healthcare staff (doctor and/or nursing staff) who register patients for the study and can then consult the answers given by the patients via their app, patients who fill in the questionnaire in the app via their smartphone and the EORTC who collects the anonymized data.
- When a questionnaire is put online, a notification is sent to patients inviting them to complete it. Reminders can be sent to patients who do not respond within a defined time frame. This helps keep in touch with patients during the study and increases the response and completion rate.
