Optimizing Research Data Acquisition With Smart Pill Bottles

Overview

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if smart pill bottles can be used as a tool to optimize data collection in clinical trials by increasing the quality of data collected and limiting the associated cost. The main questions it aims to answer are: Is the use of smart pill bottles a feasible method of data collection in clinical trials in terms of patient adherence. Is the data collected by the smart pill bottles of higher quality than that collected through human resources? What is the impact of the use of smart pill bottles on the costs involved in clinical trials ? Researchers will collect data on postoperative opioid medication consumption with the smart pill bottle and assess the adherence of patients to the device along with the quality of data collected and the costs involved in the process. Participants will: Use the smart pill bottle to consume opioid medication following surgery for 3 months At the end of the 3 month period, the group will have filled out surveys detailing their opioid consumption, surgical pain and other relevant information.

Several studies involving harnessing new technology to approach data collection have suggested that a streamlined and automated method of collecting data through connected technology can help set up cohort studies more cost-effectively. Evaluating the use of a connected device as a research tool in clinical trials and comparing it with traditional data collection using human resources would provide valuable insights into its efficiency and effectiveness. Smart medication adherence monitoring devices are a novel technology that provides objective and granular medication utilization data along with engaging patients with their treatment. Particularly, the smart pill bottle (SPB) is a rapidly developing technology that allows for medication monitoring of solid doses with the use of electronic sensors that can collect data on medication usage in real time and offer direct communication between patients and healthcare professionals or trialists. SPBs have shown efficacy in monitoring compliance and possibly increasing medication adherence in the clinical setting and the technology has been suggested as a potential research tool that would allow automatic collection of granular and precise data on the time of medication intake, dose, and frequency. However, there hasn't been a trial comparing the efficacy of using SPBs for data collection in clinical trials versus the traditional method reliant on human resources in comparable contexts. Based on the properties of SPBs and available literature supporting the automatization and streamlining of data in clinical trials, the investigators believe that the use of these devices may allow data collection of higher quality regarding granularity, number of losses of follow-up, completeness, missing data points along with a reduction of costs incurred by avoiding the use of human resources. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of using smart pill bottles (SPBs) to optimize data collection in the context of randomized control trials. The project will be a prospective observational study conducted at the CIUSSS-de-l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont) over a period of 6 to 12 months. To do so, 155 patients undergoing major abdominal surgery with postoperative opioid medication prescription will be recruited. These patient's medication consumption will be monitored with the use of a smart pill bottle for a duration of 90 days. The results of this cohort will be compared with a historical cohort from a previous study conducted within the same hospital network. The protocol for the current trial was purposefully designed to be comparable to that of this historical cohort. A loan of 50 SPBs will be obtained from Thess Corporate (Company producing smart pill bottles).