Recruitment Funnel
In a soon to be released version of ClinSpark there will be significantly enhanced functionality to support the process of identifying subjects and the subsequent recruitment steps taken to get to a screening appointment. This process is typically referred to as the Recruitment Funnel.
The recruitment process that takes place before the screening appointment is very dynamic and a lot of valuable information is collected. Telephone questionnaires may be used. Volunteers may express an interest in multiple studies and/or cohorts. Volunteers may pro-actively announce their interest in a study (cohort) through the website. The same volunteer may fit multiple studies, and a selection needs to be made what is the best fit. Potential volunteers may indicate personal preferences that need to be taken into account (‘I only do weekend studies’), or maybe something more study-specific (‘I’m on holiday that week’). Etc., etc.
In an upcoming version of ClinSpark, it will be easier to manage the process to collect all this data and use this information to better predict fully recruited cohorts. Volunteers can be selected based on a database query, inbound call, or website-originated study interest. Next, they can then be assigned a recruitment status in multiple cohorts and/or studies. Through a new area called ‘Recruitment Questions’, these volunteers can be asked relevant questions for individual studies. Users have full flexibility to either use question-templates, or adjust and define very specific questions relevant for a study.
New communication features allow deep insight into which volunteers were approached and when, when and what they responded, what made them eligible, what were the reasons for dropping out, etc. This process is typically referred to as the recruitment funnel. Besides being a tool to support the recruitment workflow, a recruitment funnel is typically used to predict the success of recruitment for specific study cohorts and adjust recruitment efforts if needed.
The built-in volunteer dashboard functionality in ClinSpark can be setup to give real-time insight into the recruitment status of each cohort and/or study. We believe this can greatly help in recruiting full cohorts each time.
One of the technologies that we use to make this possible is an extensive integration with SendGrid, an email-solution that allows deep levels of control and feedback for both bulk and transactional emails. This SendGrid integration has many more applications besides recruitment. In a separate announcement we will highlight this new feature.