What is the ROI of a Smoke Alarm?

The other day, I was at home when all of a sudden, the smoke alarm rang. I ran to the main console to find that it was actually coming from the kitchen. And indeed, my daughter – she is 9 – had left her cake in the oven slightly over time. The good news was, the house wasn’t on fire…yet. But I couldn’t help but think “what if we didn’t have these smoke detectors?”.

NFPA published some interesting metrics about the use of smoke alarms in the U.S. A whopping 40% of “home fire deaths in 2012-2016 were caused by fires in properties with no smoke alarms” or the “risk of dying in reported home structure fires is 54% lower in homes with working smoke alarms than in homes with no alarms or none that worked”.

Pretty compelling statistics, right? So, when installing smoke alarms, we’re not questioning the return on investment. We’re not hoping that it will ring, we just want them there to warn us if something goes wrong. We make the investment because we want to protect our family first as much as our investment.

Data Quality Oversight (or Central Statistical Monitoring) is no different. It’s not just about Risk-Based Monitoring, it’s not just about efficiency and therefore it’s not just about determining the ROI. It’s about protecting your patients and the significant financial investment it represents to run a clinical trial. It’s there to put your mind at rest and that is priceless.