How Can the Dynamic Drop-Down Menu be Utilized in a Study?

Prelude EDC’s user-friendly tools for customizing forms includes a handy tool known as the dynamic drop-down. This deceivingly simple field packs a lot of punch. While you can leave the drop-down menu as just that, a menu and nothing more, did you know that you can also use this menu to populate other fields or even populate it from other fields?

A great place to use this tool is on the Adverse Events and Concomitant Medications forms, so that the two can communicate with each other. If a con med gets administered to a subject due to an adverse event, both need to be documented. Using a dynamic drop-down menu on each form for the relevant subject saves a great deal of time and streamlines documentation. Once it is noted on the con med form that a medication was administered after an adverse event, then a menu appears with all previously entered adverse events for that subject. Simply select the correct event, and now the medication and adverse event are linked. Vice versa, If an adverse event required the administration of a medication in a subject, then you can select from a drop-down menu on the adverse events form all previously entered con meds.

This tool opens the door to many more opportunities for customization and, therefore, simplification of data-entry. Signature drop-down menus can either be populated from another field, i.e., from a list of names, or be role-based, meaning the names of every user who has been assigned a specified role will appear as an option. The menu for the reason a subject was withdrawn can be pre-populated conditionally (e.g., only if the subject was euthanized). This would save the investigator time as there would be no need to answer a slew of unnecessary questions to close out a patient. The transcribed CRF form features a drop-down menu that can be based on all forms or form groups, or it can include or exclude specific forms or form groups. Dynamic drop-downs can even communicate between subjects and sites (e.g., when updating con med and adverse event dictionaries).

Do you have a need for any other dynamic features? Let us know!