Improving eSource Site Start-Up Practices

• Published in: Research square
• Main Authors: Cramer, Amy E, King, Linda S, Buckley, Michael T, Casteleyn, Peter, Ennis, Cory, Hamidi, Muayad, Rodrigues, Gonçalo M C, Snyder, Denise C, Vattikola, Aruna, Eisenstein, Eric L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 24.05.2024
• Subjects: clinical trial; electronic data capture; clinical research; eSource; electronic health records; health information technology

eSource software that copies patient electronic health record data into a clinical trial electronic case report form holds promise for increasing data quality while reducing data collection, monitoring and source document verification costs. Integrating eSource into multicenter clinical trial start-up procedures could facilitate the use of eSource technologies in clinical trials. We conducted a qualitative integrative analysis to identify eSource site start-up key steps, challenges that might occur in executing those steps, and potential solutions to those challenges. We then conducted a value analysis to determine the challenges and solutions with the greatest impacts for eSource implementation teams. There were 16 workshop participants: 10 pharmaceutical sponsor, 3 academic site, and 1 eSource vendor representatives. Participants identified 36 Site Start-Up Key Steps, 11 Site Start-Up Challenges, and 14 Site Start-Up Solutions for eSource-enabled studies. Participants also identified 77 potential impacts of the Challenges upon the Site Start-Up Key Steps and 70 ways in which the Solutions might impact Site Start-Up Challenges. The most important Challenges were: (1) not being able to identify a site eSource champion and (2) not agreeing on an eSource approach. The most important Solutions were: (1) vendors accepting electronic data in the FHIR standard, (2) creating standard content for eSource-related legal documents, and (3) creating a common eSource site readiness checklist. Site start-up for eSource-enabled multi-center clinical trials is a complex socio-technical problem. This study's Start-Up Solutions provide a basic infrastructure for scalable eSource implementation.