Perceptive licenses EQ-5D for use in ePRO

05-Jan-2009 - Last updated on 05-Jan-2009 at 12:55 GMT

Perceptive Informatics has gained the right to use EQ-5D, which will allow the company to offer clinical study sponsors the option to collect health-related quality of life outcomes using a telephone.

EQ-5D is a standardised instrument for measuring a health outcome and can be completed in a few minutes without assistance. It was originally designed for use in conjunction with other instruments but is increasingly being used as a stand alone tool.

Perceptive has now licensed the instrument from EuroQoL for use with its Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) program in an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) format.

ePRO is intended to provide a means for capturing patient data quickly and easily using a telephones key pad, with questions being asked in the patients own language.

EQ-5D is available in 83 languages, which should remove one barrier from it being easily incorporated into the ePRO system.

Stephen Joel Coons, member of the EuroQoL Group, said: "I believe that the availability of an IVR version of the EQ-5D is a significant breakthrough for the biopharmaceutical industry. As one of the most widely used standardized measures of health status in the world today, there are clear advantages to collecting EQ-5D data electronically.

“I expect that study sponsors, clinical researchers, and patients will be well served by this agreement between the EuroQoL Group and Perceptive since the IVR format provides a highly efficient option for EQ-5D data collection and database creation."