Research | COVID-19 Precision Recruitment

Precision recruitment for high-risk participants in a COVID-19 cohort study

ABSTRACT: Studies for developing diagnostics and treatments for infectious diseases usually require observing the onset of infection during the study period. However, when the infection base rate incidence is low, the cohort size required to measure an effect becomes large, and recruitment becomes costly and prolonged. We describe an approach for reducing recruiting time and resources in a COVID-19 study by targeting recruitment to high-risk individuals. Our approach is based on direct and longitudinal connection with research participants and computes individual risk scores from individually permissioned data about socioeconomic and behavioural data, in combination with predicted local prevalence data. When we used these scores to recruit a balanced cohort of participants for a COVID-19 detection study, we obtained a 4- to 7-fold greater COVID-19 infection incidence compared with similar real-world study cohorts.

Read the full publication here.

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Evidation and the Duke Big Ideas Lab have announced a partnership that aims to find ways to both increase representation of underserved populations and improve adherence among all participants in digital health studies.

The organizations are working together to build an analytic structure that will be available to other digital health researchers, helping to better predict study participation, adherence, and retention. Click below to read more about the project, led by Iredia M. Olaye, PhD, MSc, MHA, of Covered By Group and Evidation, in HealthLeaders.

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Bertina Yen, Evidation's Senior Vice President of People & Community

Bertina Yen is Evidation's Senior Vice President of People & Community, where she is responsible for the end-to-end employee experience and building a community that supports everyone's ability to show up as their authentic selves and perform their best work. Prior to joining Evidation, Bertina served as EVP overseeing clinical teams, product management, marketing, and product development at Zynx Health, driving development of evidence-based clinical decision support solutions that improve health and financial outcomes.

Bertina received her BAS from Stanford, then completed her MD and residency in internal medicine at UC San Diego. She also holds an MPH in health services administration from UCLA.

Bertina is the resident DJ at Evidation and sources the music that is played during the All-Employee Meetings. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, traveling, and watching anything with a live audience (sporting events, plays, movies). She also starts every morning by completing at least one crossword puzzle!

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Publications & Abstracts

Precision recruitment for high-risk participants in a COVID-19 cohort study

ABSTRACT: Studies for developing diagnostics and treatments for infectious diseases usually require observing the onset of infection during the study period. However, when the infection base rate incidence is low, the cohort size required to measure an effect becomes large, and recruitment becomes costly and prolonged. We describe an approach for reducing recruiting time and resources in a COVID-19 study by targeting recruitment to high-risk individuals. Our approach is based on direct and longitudinal connection with research participants and computes individual risk scores from individually permissioned data about socioeconomic and behavioural data, in combination with predicted local prevalence data. When we used these scores to recruit a balanced cohort of participants for a COVID-19 detection study, we obtained a 4- to 7-fold greater COVID-19 infection incidence compared with similar real-world study cohorts.

Read the full publication here.

Related Therapeutic Areas:

Vaccines & Infectious Disease

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