Comparing patient-reported outcomes entered at home versus at hospital, and testing touch screens for initial recruitment to scientific trials in arthritis patients

Objectives: Touch screens for entering patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are available at all Danish departments of rheumatology reporting to the nationwide DANBIO registry. This project comprises two substudies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or axial spondyloarthritis (AxSpA), aiming to (A) investigate the feasibility of first line patient recruitment for research via touch screens, and (B) compare PROs collected at hospital versus at home, including patient preferences.Method: Substudy A: using a touch screen, patients answered whether we could contact them about a clinical research project (yes/no). Characteristics of patients who accepted/declined were explored using chi-squared and Mann–Whitney U-tests. Substudy B (randomized crossover agreement study): a random sample of patients from the accepting group in substudy A was contacted by telephone. According to prespecified power and sample size estimation, 56 patients were included. After randomization, 50% of patients entered PROs and info...