4 Ways Continuous Behavioral Health Measurement Improves Clinical Research and Care Delivery

Continuous behavioral health measurement uses sensors in smartphones to collect behavioral information that provides insight into the mental states of clinical trial subjects, patients, and clients. It provides insights to study investigators and clinicians that go beyond subjective self-reported measures.

Continuous behavioral health measurement can be used in clinical trials and in patient care and treatment:

In clinical trials, it can be used to measure the continued participation of subjects to improve patient retention and it can be used to measure endpoint outcomes.

In patient care, it can measure patient and client mental states in both mentally ill or chronically ill populations.

Use Case #1: Retaining Clinical Trial Participants 

One challenge in running a successful clinical trial is ensuring that subjects continue to participate through the end of the trial. Participant engagement and likelihood of completing the trial can be estimated by assessing certain behaviors throughout the trial. By continuously measuring these behaviors, investigators can better detect when a participant is less engaged or may be at risk of dropping out of the trial. Measurement platforms can also provide the ability to intervene to better engage the participant and improve retention. Clinical trial programs that use continuous behavioral health measurement can increase participant retention and improve operational performance.
 

Use Case #2: Measuring Clinical Trial Endpoints Related to Mental Health 

Many clinical trials seek objective measurement in their protocols. Continuous behavioral health measurement provides objective measurement as a complement to subjective assessments. This objective measurement of real-world behavior is critical for clinical trials that measure mental and behavioral health related endpoints.

Use Case #3: Treating and Caring for the Mentally & Chronically Ill 

Continuous behavioral health measurement provides clinicians, patients, and clients the ability to detect therapeutic progress and relapses quickly and objectively in mental and behavioral health care settings. The presence of depression and anxiety in chronically ill populations can work against outcomes because patients are often less likely to follow through on therapy plans. Continuous objective measurement can improve outcomes by giving care teams the ability to assess ongoing engagement with therapy plans and it also enables personalized intervention to address depression and anxiety. This increases patient follow-through and can reduces negative biological and psychological effects.   

Use Case #4: Real-World Data and Evidence Development 

The FDA recommends real-world data be used to demonstrate product effectiveness to make clinical trials more efficient. Real-world evidence is also critical to many value-based and analyses of health economics. This increased emphasis on real world data and evidence can be measured through objective continuous measurement of behavior to determine the ongoing correlation between therapies and health outcomes. Objective data on behaviors significantly enhances the standard subjective behavioral health assessments and patient-reported outcomes and provides important real-world evidence. It can also be used as a complement to physiological health measures for the chronically ill.

Continuous behavioral health measurement includes better clinical trial participant retention, more objective trial endpoints, real world data measurement, and improved care and treatment outcomes for mentally ill and chronically ill patients. Technologies like these can also be used to intervene during trials and improve participation and engagement. In the future, real-world data and evidence sets will need to be included as standard in objective behavioral health data. Continuous behavioral health measurement provides data effectively at the kind of scale and quality that is required.  

Learn more

If you’d like to talk more about these used applications and how they can improve your clinical and care programs, schedule a demo of Ksana Health’s continuous behavioral health measurement offerings.