Read Comments on Evaluation Report
From: A. W.
Received: Oct 6 2009 1:20PM
I wonder if there is any way to document a hard outcome like real use of the information – two networks joined forces, one network joined another network for one study, etc. The data are great as far as they go, but these just give you an appetite for more. If I have missed some hard outcome data, please let me know. I was skimming the screen which is hard to read and haven’t printed it out yet. If this is renewed in some form, maybe built-in eval might be useful I did not extensively test the website, but when I did I found out that the network’s acronym worked sometimes when the actual title of the network did not. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to more discussion. Anne
From: B. B.Received: Oct 6 2009 9:41AM
If you ask people “check out the website and see if it is useful” people are going to do only that and answer ‘yes’. But, is that the right question? Would a better question be: what do you need to do to support your clinical research/sponsorship and what are the things that make it difficult? How would you want to use information about clinical research going on across the country and how would that make your own research more successful? The survey was of researchers and administrators, but there was no one who used it daily; and frankly most people evaluating it were using it for the first time in response to the survey. So, whose workflow is this designed to support?
From: B. B.Received: Oct 6 2009 9:40AM
The satisfaction survey was interesting as it laid out some value propositions (page B-5): - Serve as a spring board for collaborating in the development of new research, - The sharing of results of previous research, and - Refinement of research in progress. These could be tied to outcomes and lay the ground work for a future mission for the CRN
From: B. B.Received: Oct 6 2009 9:39AM
A second conclusion is that these data should be merged into other, existing resources. Again, my question would be: what are the big problems that need solving and for whom, and how do these services solve that problem? I think there is a great deal of this type of focus in the CTSAs and it would make sense to start to understand the value of a resource like CRN and how it enables researchers to be more successful. There may be some natural linkages with the Research networking initiative, the Research Match program Vanderbilt is developing for a national patient recruitment network, or others. So, I think it would be very prudent for the CRN to talk to some of the KFCs (Informatics, Communications, Evaluation?).
From: B. B.Received: Oct 6 2009 9:38AM
There are also some newer models CRN could look at. One possibility is instead of searching metadata about each network and then having to negotiate each different network’s website, to directly search individual studies across multiple networks. This would take a lot of work (unless all the networks contained their data in Web 2.0 compatible stores), but by federating the lists of studies, a researcher might be able to use the sophisticated search page (which is very nice) to identify possible individual projects across a number of networks. And, is that not what they want to do (I don’t know, I’m just asking)? The other would be to trial a different model where instead of listing networks, you are listing researchers, sort of in a facebook or LinkedIn model. That way, instead of connecting people to trials, you are connecting people to people, using trials or research topics as the means to connect. This model has been trialed in the Sharecenter concept with some success.
From: B. B.Received: Oct 6 2009 9:37AM
It took me a little while to figure out what this site was supposed to be accomplishing, and for whom. I may still not have it. Westat refers to it as a report of website activity, but I was very curious as to the outcomes use of it delivered, and the workflows it supported. So, is your ultimate goal website use, or how the website enabled successful collaborations? It appears to focus on the former. The conclusions were, I think, very insightful. I think people see the information as inherently valuable, but not quite sure how to make use of it. I don’t think it was presented in terms of the role it plays in enabling some sort of outcome. So, with better alignment of the site to enabling successful research outcomes rather than presenting useful information, I think this resource could take a step forward.
