Sourcing the Crowd

Executive Summary

The AHRQ Evidence-Based Practice Centers Program’s mission is to synthesize evidence into written reports that help patients and doctors choose treatments that are right for them. Patient input is critical to ensure these reports address issues that matter to patients. However, the combination of time constraints, resource limitations, and government regulations currently limits the team to talking to only 1 or 2 patients.

This project explored whether social media and crowdsourcing could be used to reach a more diverse and representative group of patients and caregivers. We first developed a prototype that we pre-tested with patients. We then tested two approaches to ask patients about their experiences with treatment for non-melanoma skin cancer:

(1) Using Twitter to reach a large audience that directed patients to a website where they could provide their comments.
(2) Posting a question directly to an existing online patient community.

Using Twitter reached > 50,000 individuals and resulted in only 2 comments from patients. Engaging the online community, however, resulted in 26 comments from patients. Next steps will explore the feasibility of engaging online communities more routinely.

A project supported by the: HHS Ignite Accelerator

Team Members

Elise Berliner (Project Lead), AHRQ
Elisabeth Kato, AHRQ
Suchi Iyer, AHRQ
Mary Nix, AHRQ
Amanda Borsky, AHRQ

Milestones

March 2016: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
April 2016: Time in the Accelerator began
June 2016: Website launched
July 2016: Time in the Accelerator ended

Project Sponsor

Stephanie Chang, Director, Evidence-Based Practice Centers Program, Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement, AHRQ