IntroductionUMHealthResearch is the University of Michigan’s digital health research recruitment platform. It allows health researchers to connect efficiently with potentially eligible volunteers.MethodsIn 2013, the UMHealthResearch team strategically adapted a consumer behavior model, the buying funnel, to create the Digital Health Research Participation Funnel. The Digital Health Research Participation Funnel was then used to design a more active way for potential participants to volunteer for research studies through UMHealthResearch.ResultsIn the 5 years before the redesign (2007–2012), an average of 1844 new accounts were created every year, whereas in the completed years after the redesign (2013–2016) the annual average improved to 3906, an increase of 111%.ConclusionAlthough a randomized design was not possible in this instance, these preintervention and postintervention data suggest that the focus on user experience is an effective strategy for improving web-based research recruitment platforms.

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Successful social media recruitment requires specific expertise and constant upkeep, placing an inordinate burden on study teams. Over half of the study teams at the University of Michigan (U-M) surveyed about recruitment assistance needs indicated that they wanted to use social media as a recruitment strategy, but lacked the expertise to do so. We thus built a service to centralize social media recruitment across the university. This involved assembling the right expertise, creating a centralized social media profile, creating linkages to other digital recruitment platforms, building the financial structure, and operationalizing the service. So far, we have helped 94 study teams launch social media campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. These campaigns resulted in 1,653,675 users being reached, of which 20,546 users actively showed interest in participating in the corresponding studies. We followed 18 studies further, who reported a total of 345 social media participants as being enrolled, resulting in an average cost-per-contact (CPC) of $8.72 and an average cost-per-enrollee (CPE) of $55.21. The combination of communication expertise, streamlined administrative processes, and linkages to a centralized research participation registry has allowed us to help a large number of study teams seamlessly engage broad and diverse populations.