Last month, I ran a quick survey to determine the preferred EDC solution.
Of course, statistically and scientifically, the poll was flawed. I originally ran the survey in January to test out the new Poll feature – this ‘preferred EDC’ question was asked from a ‘Sites perspective’. This second survey – focused towards DM, BioStats and Safety personnel – was more heavily supported.
In total, of 137 responses were given. The LinkedIn poll only allows 5 choices, so that same survey was raised 3 times with different companies spreadsheet across the 3 pool questions. The chart above is an accumulation of the results.
No surprise that the biggest response was from Medidata. As a former Medidata employee, it was likely that a poll raised by myself would attract greater attention from Medidata, and Medidata clients.
eClinicalOpinion recently posted an update to the excellent online App – http://edcmarket.appspot.com/ with up to date information on the EDC systems on the market. This is obviously a more complete list than the 15 I posted on linkedin.
One thing the survey does raise is the difficulty that potential sponsor companies can face in finding the best solution to meet their individual requirements. For the bigger firms, spending a few hundred thousand dollars on one of the leading solutions usually makes sense. The risk of failure is likely to be lower. If problems do occur, the vendors usually have the clout and manpower to resolve issues.
Where things are more complicated is at the financially more conservative side of the market. The EDC Market app helps clarify the functionality. What it doesn’t do is describe whether the features actually work, or are efficient.
What I would like to see if more honest dialog from users. We are all accustomed to reading about which products are good and bad… which hotels are worthwhile staying at… and whether a car has niggled that might put a buyer off. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to hear from experienced users whether an eClinical product feature actually delivers?
Anyway – returning to the survey result. Does the LinkedIn Poll feature work well… not really. Is Medidata Rave the best EDC product – maybe…
Over the next few months, I am going to be questioning some of the User Requirements that exist when capturing data in clinical trials, and how eClinical systems go about meet these requirements.