Single Case Designs: MVA’: A Mobile Application for Conducting Single-Case Experimental Research Remotely

• Activity Number: 470 - Beyond Precision Medicine: Making It Personal with N-of-1 and Single Case Methods for Medicine, Rare Diseases, Digital Health, Behavior, and Wearables
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biometrics Section
• Author(s): Mariola Moeyaert*
• Companies: University at Albany
• Keywords: Personalized Medicine; Mobile Application; Masked Visual Analysis; N-of-1 trials

Abstract

To generalize intervention effectiveness from N?of?1 trials, the experiment can be repeated across participants using a multiple-baseline design (MBD). In order to enhance the internal validity of the MBD, the introduction of the intervention is staggered across participants and participants are randomly assigned to staggered intervention start points. As a method that can increase the rigor of MBDs while preserving the benefits of a response-guided approach, visual analysis and randomization, masked visual analysis (MVA) is recommended. To facilitate MVA, we developed a free mobile application (https://www.singlecasemva.com/). The application can enhance the methodology to design, gather and analyze N-of-1 trials by (1) creating in real time graphs, (2) avoiding errors in data transfer from intervention to analysis team (3), making the process standardized and ensuring the masked component, (4) helping implementing a randomized experiment, (5) assisting in understanding the masked procedure, (6) helping researchers making inferences and calculating p-values, (7) data sharing and communication with other research teams.