Configuring Study For ePRO and eDiaries

Setting up a Study to Collect Data From Participants at Defined Intervals, Frequencies, and Times of Day.

This article covers the setup and configuration of studies that need to collect data directly from Participants. This is generically referred to in TrialKit as ePRO, but also includes the collection of diaries.

Table of Contents:

Enable ePRO for Study

Methods for deploying the forms at the right times:

• Within a scheduled visit window
• At a defined interval
• Specific days and times of each week
• Conditionally based on another ePRO form (Event Driven)

Participant Notifications

Allowing Participants to access past forms

Giving access to historical data

Testing An ePRO Study

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Enable ePRO for Study

Similar to other functions, the master control to enable ePRO must be turned on. This is done in  Study Configuration / Functionality.

In the Role Security tab, add a new role for the Participant (can be named anything), like below.  The subject must have a hierarchy value of zero (0) and a Role Type of 'Site'.  

The new Participant role must also be given the following permissions:

Additionally, give this new role view/edit access to the forms they will be filling out.

Setup the Registration Form to Collect the Participant's Email Address

In the Form Builder, open the form that is being used as the Registration form. Answer "Yes" to the question "Will the subject participate in remote surveys?". Drag or enter an email address field onto the form and set the Special Type field property to 'Subject Email'.

Include an email CA to notify the Participant of how to sign in

When a Participant is registered on this form, it usually makes sense to have the system also send an email to the Participant notifying them that they have been added to the study and include any instructions of how to access TrialKit. A template/example is shown below, but can be configured any way as discussed in email notifications for conditional actions.

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Defining which forms will be completed by Participants

Any forms that need to be accessible to the Participants should contain the 'ePRO' form property. 

If the form will be collected repeatedly as a diary (not within a scheduled visit), it should be tagged as a log form with a relation of 'Many'. A consent form or a daily diary are two examples of this.

The Visit Date Field on ePRO Forms

Visit Dates are defined on any subject-type form. ePRO forms are no different, but the system will do something different with this date during data entry. When a Participant opens the form to complete, this date will auto-fill with the user’s current date/time (based on their timezone preference). 

For this reason, it's normally advised to make the visit date field a date+time, and label it as "Date Entered" or something similar, since the system will be auto-populating it.

 

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Methods for Deploying Forms at the Right Times

There are four methods of providing forms to study Participants and making them available for the specified duration of time. The combination of these methods will cover most requirements that studies have for making sure forms get completed at precise time points in a given Participant's study involvement.

1. Forms collected within the visit schedule design
2. On a defined interval (weeks, days, or hours), up to hourly
3. On specific days and times of the week, up to hourly at the top of the hour
4. Based on an event - One of the ePRO forms conditionally triggers another form. Triggered forms can be deployed up to every 5 minutes.

Within a Scheduled Visit Window

To collect forms within a scheduled visit, simply make the form part of a visit that has the required date/time window. 

In the example below, a diary needs to be collected from the Participant during the same period of time that the 3-month followup visit occurs:

The form will be available for Clinicians to view within the subject's casebook assuming they have view rights to that form, but it will be entered by the Participant.

The Participant will get access to the form at the low window date of the visit. 

Notifications

If the form is set to have notifications, a notification will be sent to the Participant at the low window date for the visit. This assumes the form is not set to have the notifications disabled.

This notification is configured in the ePRO Notification Configuration screen.

How long the form will be available

The form will be available for the Participant to complete until the high end of the visit window, or until the form is completed. If the study exit form is completed for the Participant, then the visit window will not apply.

 

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eDiary Configuration - ePRO Forms Not Collected Within a Visit Schedule

When ePRO forms are not being collected within a visit schedule, the Diary Configuration screen is where you can define which ePRO forms to deploy at a specified frequency. 

Web Browser: 

Open the Scheduled visit setup screen to access the Diary configurations:

Mobile App:

 

To create an eDiary/ePRO form, add a new configuration and fill out the form. Here's an example of a diary form that the Participant needs to complete every morning at a specific time, starting at the Day 1 visit, and they have 1 day to complete it each time the form is deployed. After 90 days the diary will stop running (per subject based on their respective Day 1 visit date).

Definition of Terms in the Diary Configuration

• Starting Interval - When the diary as a whole will start running. The system needs a reference point for this and visit intervals are a great way to define that point.
• Expiration in Days - The total overall duration in which the diary should run. 
• Time Unit - The value set for the Frequency and Completion window will be based on the time unit set here. Example: "5" for the completion window will mean 5 days if the time unit is set to days.
• Completion window - For each iteration of a form being deployed, how long should the Participant have to complete it before the next iteration comes due.
• Forms to deploy - Check which form(s) apply to the diary deployment configuration. 
• eDiary Type - The type of diary that's needed is described in the following parts of this article.
• Frequency - How often the form should be deployed based on the time unit.  If the time unit is set to hours, a frequency of "3" would mean the form is getting deployed every 3 hours.
• Maximum Forms - How many forms can the Participant enter as a maximum. This will determine if the diary should turn off prior to the expiration days that were defined.
• Do not send notifications - This prevents the system from sending notifications each time a form is deployed.

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At a Defined Interval

Forms that need to be collected on a regular recurring interval. For example, every 1 day, every 7 days, or to make a form always available.

Within the Diary Configuration screen, choose the Diary Type "Interval", and fill out the parameters of the diary. Read above on how to configure an eDiary.

Always Available forms: If a form needs to be constantly available to the Participant, the frequency should be set to zero (0). This will make it so a form is always there. If the Participant saves one, another one will be available to complete. This will occur until the diary expires or the maximum number of forms has been reached.

Notifications

Each time a form is made available, a notification will be sent to the Participant.

Exceptions:

• The Do Not Send Notifications option is not checked
• The diary is always available 
• In the example shown above, the Participant will be notified every 24 hours (1 day) after the low range of the Baseline visit interval date.

How Long the Form will be Available

Each iteration of a form will be available until the defined completion window is reached or until the form is completed.

The Diary will expire entirely (stop running) based on:

• The expiration period for the diary is reached
• The study exit form is completed for the Participant
• The maximum number of forms has been met

 

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Specific Days and Times of Each Week

Forms that need to be completed on specific days and times of the week. For example, every Monday and Friday at 7 am and 7 pm.

Within the diary configuration screen, choose the 'Specific Time' type. Then tap on any day of the week that the form needs to be available. A window will open to also select the time(s) for that day.

Overlapping diary examples (to avoid):

• If a diary is set to go out at 6 pm and expire after 8 hours, there is an overlap into the next day. If the diary is completed at 1 am, then the system thinks the diary is complete for that next day.
• If the visit date defined on the diary form does not include time, the system will assume it was saved at midnight whenever the patient saves it, which may prevent it from not disappearing from the Participant’s list of forms due.

Notifications

Similar to Interval diaries, the Participant will receive a notification each time a form is deployed for delivery. The notification message is defined within the ePRO Notification settings.

 

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Conditionally Based on Another ePRO Form (Event Driven)

Forms that need to be completed only based on specific events that can vary per Participant. For example, a drug diary is always available for a Participant to indicate when the drug is used. Based on that event, a follow-up form needs to be filled out every 2 hours for the next 6 hours.

The most versatile way to set these up is through a conditional action on the form that will always be available (the 'Trigger form'). By using a conditional action, you can define exactly what is needed to trigger another form. To learn more, read about Event trigger conditional actions.

How Long the Triggered Form will be Available

The form that gets triggered for a given event will be available for the duration specified within the conditional action, or until the maximum number of forms is entered.

 

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Notifications To Participants

Participants will receive notifications anytime a form becomes due, based on how the Visit schedule or eDiary is configured. Here are a couple of examples:

• 6-month follow-up visit includes an ePRO form. The Participant will receive a notification on the low date of the visit window. The form will remain available for the duration of the visit window and may also receive reminder notifications depending on the Notification configuration.
• The Interval diary goes out at a frequency of once per day for 10 days after the 3-month follow-up visit. Starting on the 3-month follow-up visit, the Participant will begin receiving daily notifications until the diary expires in 10 days or the maximum number of forms have been entered.

There are various reasons notifications might not go out when a form becomes due:

• Notifications are not configured in the ePRO Notifications screen.
• Notifications have not been allowed in the eDiary settings - detailed in the section above.
• The form is collected in an hourly-based visit schedule. Visit schedule forms are limited to one notification per day. The first notification will go out based on the visit window, but if there is another visit in the following hours of the same day, a notification will not go out. Only the form will be due to complete. For hourly notifications, use an eDiary rather than a visit schedule.
• The ePRO form is defined as not send notifications
• The visit window is not active or has already sent a notification for the current window
• The Participant has disabled notifications in their own preferences

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Allowing Participants to access past forms

Participants can optionally be given access to one or both of the following:

Past forms that have been entered, but are not yet locked by a review level. These are called "Completed Forms", and are made available via the study functionality settings. 

Forms collected within a visit schedule that were missed (visit window expired). These are called "Expired Forms", and are made available via the study functionality settings.

Participants then access those forms via their menu options.

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Giving Access to Historical Data

Participants can optionally be allowed to view past data that auto-filter the Participants own data. This is useful for Participants to see all the data they have entered without going through past completed forms. For example, the Participant can view a history of how well they have felt since being part of the study.

This is done via the Report Builder where a report can be targeted to the Participant's role.

 

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Testing An ePRO Study

As a study gets configured with the Participant-facing forms  needed, testing it out is an important step to verify the desired behavior. This can seem difficult since consenting may be involved and forms might only get deployed occasionally, such as a 1-month follow up visit. It doesn't make sense to wait one month to see if the form comes available to the test Participant. This section provides a step by step on how to efficiently test the consent and PRO portion of the study.

1. Register a subject with an email address that is owned by the person performing the testing. An alias address usually makes the most sense here so there are not multiple inboxes to monitor as the testing is done. Most email platforms, like Google Workspace, provide a method of quickly creating alias addresses. In Gmail this is done by adding "+sometext" in the prefix. For example: name+studyA@gmail.com

To make the testing email addresses easy to track, use the study name and subject ID in the the email. For example: name+studyA_100002@gmail.com. Now when you get an email in your inbox, you know which study and subject ID it's for.

2. Verify the Participant received some sort of email notice on how to access TrialKit (discussed in the section above)

3. Sign in as the Participant on either the mobile app or web browser.

4. If consent is being enforced for the study, verify the consent form works as intended both in an incomplete state and a complete state.

5. Verify the correct form(s) are due for completion at the right time. This part can be tricky because it's not desirable to wait for forms to become due. The due periods can be manipulated by adjusting the dates for the subject, which drive the dependent forms. For example, if a daily diary is supposed to start one day after registration date, the registration date for that subject can be adjusted to yesterday's date, so the system thinks it is now a day later.

6. Exit/Withdrawal the subject from the study to verify the Participant no longer receives forms or notifications.