By Jamie Nicpon | Office of Communications & Marketing | 8-24-2018

Associate Professor Lisa Segre, PhD, current postdoctoral fellow Julie Vignato, et al., were recently informed that their manuscript, “Using Mobile Health Applications for the Rapid Recruitment of Perinatal Women,” has been accepted for publication in the journal Archives of Women’s Mental Health.

The manuscript describes a recruitment strategy that allows researchers to “cast a broader net” for research participant enrollment by recruiting participants through online mobile health applications. In this instance, Dr. Vignato utilized Ovia Pregnancy, which is a mobile health application for pregnant women, to recruit for her study.

“The study recruitment ad opened on the Ovia application site on November 6, 2017. Julie happened to be attending a conference on perinatal mental health research in Chicago that week and was scheduled to present on using this recruitment strategy,” explained Dr. Segre. “By the time Julie presented (shortly after recruitment began), enrollment had occurred so quickly that as she describe the strategy she also was able to share that after only three-and-a-half days of recruiting she had completed study enrollment and data collection!”

According to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, the number of available mobile health applications increased by more than 100 percent from 2013 to 2015. These applications typically focus on a specific clinical population and thus provide a potentially valuable recruitment venue.

Using the Ovia app as a recruitment strategy was recommended to Drs. Segre and Vignato by Dr. Michael O’Hara, a professor in UI’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, who had previously experienced success using this recruitment resource for a clinical trial.  

“Because of the recruitment success in the studies by Drs. Vignato and O’Hara, we decided to share this strategy with other perinatal mental health researchers through the publication in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health,” added Dr. Segre.

In keeping with the theme of “uber quick” enrollment and data collection, publication of this manuscript was also part of an expedited process, as it was accepted and published online within one week of submission to the journal.

Click here to read the full publication in Archives of Women's Mental Health.

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