Tailored System to Deliver Behavioral Intervention and Manage Data in Randomized Trials

BACKGROUND: The integrity of behavioral intervention trials depends on consistent intervention delivery, and uniform, comprehensive process data collection. It can be challenging in practice due to complex human interactions involved. OBJECTIVE: We sought to design a system to support the fidelity of intervention delivery and efficient capture of qualitative and quantitative process data for a telephone-delivered behavioral counseling intervention to increase physical activity and function after total knee replacement surgery. METHODS: A tailored system was designed to prompt the intervention coach in the delivery of a 5 step counseling protocol to support intervention fidelity across patients. System features included structured data components, automated data exchange functions, user-friendly data capture screens, and real-time surveillance reporting. The system structured the capture of patient goals and open-ended conversation. RESULTS: The system recorded intervention process data from each of 12 sessions held with the 92 intervention patients. During the trial, 992 telephone sessions were conducted, and more than 97% (4816/4960) of intervention process data fields were completed in the system. The coach spent 5-10 minutes preparing for each counseling call using system-generated summaries of historical data and 10-15 minutes entering intervention process data following each telephone session. CONCLUSIONS: This intervention delivery system successfully supported the delivery of a structured behavioral counseling intervention and collection of intervention process data. It addressed the unique needs of clinical behavioral intervention trials, and had promising potential to facilitate high-fidelity translation of the intervention to broad clinical practice and Web-based multicenter clinical trials in the future.