Considerations for Conducting Bring Your Own “Device” (BYOD) Clinical Studies

Why “Bring Your Own Device” Is More Than a Cost-Saving Shortcut

In-clinic data collection has a well-known limitation: it captures only a snapshot of a participant’s physiology, behavior, and function, one that can be distorted by artifacts like white coat hypertension and doesn’t necessarily reflect how someone functions under free-living conditions. A review published in Digital Biomarkers, co-authored by Koneksa Health’s Elena Izmailova, examines Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) study designs, where participants use their own smartphones or devices rather than sponsor-issued hardware, as an alternative approach to capturing more representative clinical data.

What the Review Covers

• The limitation BYOD addresses: In-clinic assessments often yield only brief snapshots of participant physiology and function, prone to biases and artifacts that don’t reflect how a person behaves or performs in everyday, free-living conditions.
• Multi-modal sensor potential: Modern digital health technologies equipped with multiple sensor modalities can combine different data streams to derive more comprehensive endpoints, ones that are both clinically meaningful and meaningful to study participants themselves.
• BYOD as a distinct study design: Rather than treating “digital health technology” as a single category, the review focuses specifically on the considerations unique to BYOD designs, where variability in device type, operating system, and personal usage patterns introduces challenges not present with provisioned devices.
• Practical guidance for sponsors: The paper is framed around helping study teams think through the specific operational and methodological considerations that come with allowing participants to use their own devices for data collection.

Why BYOD Deserves Its Own Playbook

This review makes clear that BYOD isn’t simply “provisioned devices, but cheaper”; it introduces its own distinct set of design considerations, from device heterogeneity to participant-specific usage patterns, that sponsors need to plan for deliberately. Getting BYOD study design right unlocks more representative, free-living data, but only if the specific challenges of participant-owned devices are addressed head-on rather than assumed away.

Koneksa Health applies this same attention to study design detail when helping sponsors decide whether a BYOD approach, versus provisioned devices, is the right fit for a given digital endpoint strategy.

Reference: Demanuele C, Lokker C, Jhaveri K, et al. Considerations for Conducting Bring Your Own “Device” (BYOD) Clinical Studies. Digit Biomark. 2022;6(2):47-60. doi:10.1159/000525080. PMID: 35949223.