Once your recruitment study is set up and recruiting, participants can reach it in three different ways. This article covers all three, how to review what arrives, and how to hand an enrolled participant over to the clinical side.
Bring in prospects from the Subject Database
Use this when you want a filtered list of existing subjects saved under the study, so your staff review and contact each one rather than letting them start on their own. It gives you control from the first step.
🔑 Prerequisite: the recruitment study status is Recruiting, and there are already subjects in your Subject Database.
You start from the database, not from the study.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Subject Database.
Apply filters matching your study criteria.
Select the rows you want.
Click Assign to Recruitment Study.
Search for and select the recruitment study.
Select the Center.
Choose the Application Status to apply, Active or Inactive, and decide whether to send the automatic email invitation.
Click Submit.
An application row appears on the recruitment study dashboard waiting for your review, with the center and status you chose already applied.
Build a recruitment pool and contact it
Use this when you want to send the study details to a prefiltered slice of your contacts, and keep the filter history and logs under the study for later reference. Here you start from the study.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Recruitment Studies and open the study.
Click + Add Participants.
Apply filters matching your study criteria.
Select the rows you want.
Click Select (n) Participants.
Enter a Recruitment Pool Name, so you can identify this search later.
Choose the Communication Channel and write the message.
Click Create a Recruitment Pool.
From there the statuses move on their own as people respond. An application row is created with the status Prospect. If you sent a communication, the status becomes Contacted. If the participant clicks through and starts the process, it becomes Interested. If you have a pre-screening survey and they complete it, automations set Qualified or Disqualified from their answers.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Edit an existing pool
Open the pool using the pool icon shown below.
Click the pool you want to change, and follow the same steps to review, modify or duplicate it.
⚠️ Warning: deleting a pool does not delete the applications it created. They stay on the study dashboard. If you want them gone too, select those rows and delete them yourself.
Take applications online from new contacts
Beyond your existing contacts, you can publish the study and receive applications from people who are not in your database at all.
🔑 Prerequisite: the recruitment study's online landing page is configured.
What you share is a QR code, or the hyperlink behind it.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Navigate to Recruitment Studies and open the study.
Open the Settings tab.
Go to the QR Code page.
Click Copy, using the icon shown below.
Share the QR code or link wherever you need it: your website, social media, or printed material.
An interested person applies from the landing page and has to give a valid email address. If that address already exists in your database they are asked to log in; if it does not, they create a profile. From there the statuses behave the same as for a pool: Interested when they start, then Qualified or Disqualified once a pre-screening survey is completed.
Read the application statuses
These definitions describe the most standard way the platform is used. Your staff can change a status by hand at any time and adapt the meanings to your own process. The automatic transitions stay active regardless, and in most cases cannot be customized.
Status | What it means |
Prospect | Identified through a pool or through Assign to Recruitment Study. Your staff need to contact them. |
Contacted | Contacted, and you are waiting for a reply. |
Interested | Clicked Apply on a landing page and started the application online. |
Qualified | Passed the pre-screening questionnaire, the recruitment call, or both. Eligible, with a first visit booked at the center. |
Enrolled | Attended the first visit and is officially in the study. |
Completed | Finished every visit the protocol requires. |
Disqualified | Ineligible, or unavailable to join. |
Not Interested | Told you they do not want to take part. |
Excluded | Was Qualified or even Enrolled, but can no longer continue the protocol. |
Review the applications that arrive
Applications reach your dashboard by all three routes above. Two controls do most of the work of deciding who to call first.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Filter by status
Click the colored status flow in the top bar.
Review what comes back and decide the next step.
Show database and pre-screening answers
Click the variables icon shown below.
Choose whether to include database variables, pre-screening survey responses, or both.
Use the answers on screen to decide who is worth calling back.
💡 Tip: you cannot filter on the answers once they are displayed. If you need to filter or sort on them, export to Excel and work there.
Move a participant into a clinical study
If your platform has both modules, you can pull participants from a recruitment study straight into an EDC study, without retyping anybody. On the EDC study's Subjects page, the blue + offers a From recruitment tab listing the participants of the linked recruitment study.
🔑 Prerequisite: three things have to be true, and they are set in three different places.
The recruitment study status is Recruiting.
The EDC study status is Live.
The recruitment study's settings carry an EDC link pointing at that EDC study.
Only participants at Qualified or Enrolled appear in that tab. For the full procedure on the clinical side, see Include a subject and open their eCRF.
💡 Tip: if the From recruitment tab shows nothing, the usual cause is the EDC link never being set in the recruitment study's settings. That link is invisible from the EDC side, so check it from the recruitment study.