Our retention and compliance solutions are designed to be quick and easy to use, minimising the impact of site personnel’s daily activities. As a result Site response is extremely positive. Compared with many electronic systems forced upon sites this actually helps them out. Although they need to enrol the patient, taking a minute or two, site personnel benefit from the system automatically managing the patient retention process. No longer do site staff need to sit on the telephone trying to ensure that the patient is still coming in for their 9am appointment as the system determines this via timely interaction with subject via their own cell phone. Additionally, the visit schedule is generated by the software according to the requirements of the protocol when the patient is enrolled. This is an additional feature which sites see as a significant benefit as it means that they don’t have to schedule and document the visit schedule for their subject.  We ensure training of site personnel and monitor site activity, providing sponsors and CRO’s with reports which highlight levels of site adoption. Where adoption is deemed to be an issue we work with sponsors and CRO’s to ensure the sites are engaged with the use of the solutions provided. Where possible we also recommend that we monitor adoption rates by comparing against IVR Randomization lists as part of the operational review process. Further, we have the ability to integrate with leading IVR solutions to ensure that the randomization and retention process is in lock step.

There are a number of independent studies which have shown that the use of telephone reminder prompts significantly increases retention and compliance rates. At Exco InTouch we have compared the compliance and retention rates between sites that adopted our solutions and those which used traditional methods of patient communication. These results show that when our solutions are used by a site, they can expect a ten fold improvement in compliance and retention rates.

We find that when offered the choice, the majority of patients readily approve of the SMS reminder service. In one ongoing study over 2000 subjects (two thirds of the trial population) self enrolled themselves to receive the free reminder service. We also have instances where patients have specifically requested to the site that they want to use a SMS reminder service, prior to being offered the choice.

Exco InTouch has relationships with over 750 mobile networks in 220 countries, enabling the worldwide sending and delivery tracking of SMS text messages. All SMS text messages transmitted by Exco InTouch are subject to a full audit trail and a receipt generation mechanism which means that we know when a text message has been sent and successfully received by a patient. Where we are notified that a message was not delivered we have configurable processes in place to manage the resending of messages and alerting of key stakeholders in the process as appropriate.

At Exco InTouch we believe in making the whole process simpler for both the site /sponsor and the patients and we have worked with third party payment system providers to ensure effective and efficient payment of patient stipends. Our services have been integrated with third party debit card payment systems, where we trigger an SMS notification to let card holders know when their payments have been sent and notify them of their current balance.

YES, all you need to do is registers the mobile phone number of the parents or caregivers on the system against the subject ID and the system will do the rest.