There is little doubt that COVID-19 has upended and disrupted everyone’s routines. Similar to other pandemics, it’s a race to figure out the details of the virus so that proper procedures and medical responses can be created. You might be wondering how qualitative and quantitative market research comes into play with the pandemic. Simply, the medical establishment will be conducting many quantitative and qualitative studies to learn more about the virus. While these studies may differ from standard market research studies, when it comes to recruiting participants for COVID-19 studies, the same rules apply.
Many medical studies require control groups, so nationwide recruiting firms will be given very specific screeners. There is still much to learn about COVID-19 within populations, and we’re anticipating many studies that will be looking for people who have contacted the virus and recovered, as well as those who have not been exposed to COVID-19.
Participant recruitment for any medical study adds additional layers of regulations. Privacy is, of course, very important, but so too is managing the data from the study. If the data is to be transcribed, similar privacy and HIPPA regulations apply. Focus Insite has recruited for hundreds of medical studies over the years, and we’re very familiar with the additional burden of recruiting for such studies. We have a team of dedicated medical and healthcare recruiters, who have depth of experience in healthcare. It is also why we decided to add transcription services to our core business offerings, as we’re familiar with the all the regulations involved with data management of medical studies.
Recruiting for any type of study can be a challenge. There is no shortage of qualitative research scholarly articles that address the additional challenges of recruiting for healthcare studies. As with any recruitment effort, having a robust screening guide is the first place to start. Right away, this helps sort out qualified and unqualified participants. Once participants have been selected, there is a lot of good, old-fashioned project management required to ensure that participants have all the details of the study; show up to the study on time; are replaced, if necessary (this happens quite frequently); and are compensated at the end of the study.
If you are designing a healthcare study and require recruitment, you can save a lot of time and money by outsourcing this critical function to a nationwide recruitment agency. Focus Insite has a proven, successful track record of recruiting for small and large-scale healthcare studies. You can rest assured that privacy matters and HIPPA regulations will be strictly met and followed when working with our dedicated team of professionals.
