Digital technologies to support self-management of COPD: Evidence generation plan

The digital technologies for supporting self-management of COPD could be more beneficial if they are used by people who were recently diagnosed with COPD, early in their care pathway. The companies should consider testing the technology at varied points in the NHS care pathway to determine the point where digital technologies could be most beneficial.

The digital technologies could be more beneficial if they are set up to ensure that language and cultural considerations of their users are met, and the digital literacy of people using the technologies are considered.

Evidence generation should be overseen by a steering group including researchers, commissioners, practitioners, and people with lived experience.

The evidence generation process is most likely to succeed with dedicated research staff to reduce the burden on NHS staff, and by using suitable real-world data to collect information when possible.

Careful planning of the approach to information governance is vital. The companies should ensure that appropriate structures and policies are in place to ensure that the data is handled in a confidential and secure manner, and to appropriate ethical and quality standards.

Recording multiple baseline measures is likely to be challenging. So, the issue of apparent improvement in outcome measurement being potentially caused by 'regression to the mean' effect could be best considered though statistical approaches in analysis, for example, through analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Using the EQ-5D-3L requires a licence, with an associated cost.