The completion of COAs as part of a clinic visit during a clinical trial is a common method for collecting such instruments. With lockdown and social distancing, telephone interviewing (delivered by a person), seems to be the preferred alternative of deployment for some licensees. However, the routine adoption of this methodology as an alternative to pen and paper completion needs to be approached with caution. We have therefore, with the support of our instrument developers, devised a set of tailored instructions that accompany our Clinical Outcome Assessments, to be used by the interviewer/clinician. To enhance confidence that this approach is delivering comparable results, we are advising that the patient is also provided a copy of the standalone measure in paper form or electronically, so that they can view the questions in parallel to the interview and so have a visual reference (or prompt) as part of the telephone interview. If you are a user of one of our COAs and wish to use our telephone interview scripts, please do contact us.

This mode of delivery brings about many advantages to a study and as such, developer/owner approval of content and function is key part of ensuring a faithful reproduction of the original paper and pen mode of completion. We have therefore allocated new specialist resource to meet increased user demand and ensure that licensees eCOA platforms are reviewed in a timely manner with the same high-quality approach we always provide. In this way all stakeholders can, with confidence, rely on the faithful reproduction of our COAs. We are on hand to advise and discuss your study requirements for electronic deployment of our own and other COA instruments.

We are very pleased to announce that Beatrice Tedeschi joined us in early March to help coordinate our rapidly expanding translation activities. The first major project being managed by Beatrice, in response to COVID-19, has been the delivery of translations around the telephone interview instructions for our measures to support our global userbase.