What will the participants be doing during their study session?
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Understanding the Importance of Human Factors Recruiting
Human Factors & Usability Testing plays a critical role in bringing medical devices, software as a medical device (SaMD), and combination products to market. It starts with a deep understanding of the intended user population; when you take time to learn about the user needs, limitations, and abilities, you can bring true insights to the build, design, and development process.
Learn about the importance of the Human Factors recruitment process and how Improvita can guide you through the recruitment process to fulfill your recruitment needs.
One of the most important factors in a successful Human Factors & Usability Testing Program is to recruit participants for research that most closely represent the intended users of the product. Analyzing how participants interact with a product in a realistic use environment provides valuable insights that enable elegant design and promote safe and effective use. Direct user feedback informs strategic thinking and deliberation to optimize the product’s design, reduce use errors, improve efficiency, and foster the best possible outcomes.
Recruiting participants to give authentic interactions, thoughtful analysis, and quality feedback is vital to successful study execution and meeting study objectives. These documented observations from any given research study participant help our innovative team spark new ideas and proactively develop solutions and mitigate risks.
Gaining the valued perspective of our research participants during our Human Factors studies is an integral part of making a safe and user-friendly product. Our research participants provide their genuine feedback on the product and experience. Their assessments during Formative studies are considered when determining ways to enhance the user’s experience of the product, allowing us to conduct effective and rewarding Validation studies.
Recruitment of participants can become challenging when the participant pool is niche or specific. Designing strategic, thorough, and innovative recruitment plans to recruit the intended use population is important. Recruiting user populations begins with gaining a clear understanding of the study protocol objectives and the eligibility criteria for potential participants.
Improvita has developed a comprehensive participant database by gathering information from various sources. This curated directory offers an organized resource to facilitate the recruitment of research participants for any study. Having a diverse contact database allows for recruitment of targeted populations (HCPs, patients, caregivers, etc.), specialized, and/or vulnerable populations. For example, children, or people with a specific disease.
Best Practices for Recruiting Participants for Human Factors Research
It’s important to keep the following points in mind when recruiting participants for a study:
To be sure we are enrolling eligible participants to our studies, our screening materials always include questions to satisfy the inclusion and exclusion criteria from the study protocol.
Recruitment communications should use simple, easy to understand language that explains the purpose of the research and includes among other requirements what a participant can expect to do during their session, how long it will last and if they will be financially compensated for their time.
When administering the informed consent process, we follow FDA guidance and provide adequate information to our potential participants to allow for an informed decision about their participation in the our research, to facilitate their comprehension of the information, to provide adequate opportunity for the potential participant to ask questions and to consider whether to participate, to obtain their voluntary agreement to participate, and to continue to provide information as the research study progresses or as the participant or situation requires.
At Improvita, we celebrate our participants and what a valuable contribution they make by volunteering in our research projects. With an emphasis on building and maintaining strong relationships with possible participants and ethics committees we aim to fulfill study recruitment on time.
Why Choose Improvita for Human Factors Recruiting?
At Improvita, we work collaboratively with our clients to understand and articulate each study’s specific recruiting requirements. Working as an extension of our clients, our expert recruitment team utilizes broad experience to craft innovative and effective recruitment plans securing qualified participants on time and within budget.
We understand that recruitment of studies is critical to the success of our client’s projects. Our recruitment team excels at making connections, building rapport, and leveraging important relationships to successfully recruit all participants including those who present challenges due to the uniqueness, rareness, or vulnerability of the population needed.
It takes more than just a smart plan and a willingness to be creative and work hard to reach recruitment goals. At Improvita, we recognize the value of every contributor. Whether it is a participant taking time out of their busy life, the careful review of our study documents by an ethics committee, or the study manager that collaborates to ensure processes are followed to ease study execution, we know we cannot do it without one another. We strive to build relationships and communicate appreciation and connect those who want to be part of something meaningful and important. Let’s empower health, together.
To learn more about Improvita’s Global Human Factors recruiting consulting services, contact us to discuss your specific needs.
