Enhancing accessibility and impact of digitally enabled clinical trials: the WeShare engagement and equity toolkit
Digital technologies are advancing rapidly, reshaping the way we design, operate, and execute clinical trials. Digitally enabled trials are particularly well-positioned to accelerate the implementation of oncology research by streamlining key clinical trial processes such as screening, recruitment, consent, data collection, follow-up, and intervention delivery. Ensuring engagement and addressing equity concerns are critical to the success of these trials, especially if the goal is for digital health to act as an equalizer, reducing existing and persistent disparities in oncology care. This perspective emphasizes the development and implementation of a comprehensive toolkit to tackle engagement and equity challenges within digitally enabled clinical trials.
Key words: health equity, engagement, digitally enabled clinical trials, diversity and inclusion, implementation science.
Inclusion of diverse populations in clinical trials improves the generalizability of scientific outcomes and enhances the capacity of research to affect policy and practice. It also tributes to health equity by giving all potential participants the same opportunity to access innovations in care and research. In oncology, and in several other health practices, it is established that clinical trial populations do not reflect the real-world population.1Clinical trials often exclude older adult patients, patients with comorbidities, patients living in rural areas, and patients belonging to a marginalized racial, ethnic or lower sociodemographic group, despite increasing concern about this issue among policymakers, patient ad
vocates, medical society, and some industry leaders.
