- Specializing in Creating Customized IVRs, Voice, SMS, Chat and HIPAA Compliant Secure Message Applications
PRO Survey Programs For Universities and Academic Medical Centers
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Multi-site PROMIS, FACIT and custom PRO collection that your IRB, security office and statistician can live with
Most research teams we talk to already have the instruments and the database. What they are missing is the patients who never open the portal: older adults, rural patients, people on basic or prepaid phones, and patients who would rather answer in Spanish, French or another language than in English.
IVR Lab runs the phone and text side of your PRO program. We deliver the PROMIS, FACIT and custom measures you have licensed by automated call, SMS and secure link, keep each site’s lists and exports separate, and return data shaped for your research database. Your IRB, your security office and your statistician each get the answers they need.
Plan your next PRO study with IVR Lab
Share your instruments, sites and timeline. We'll reply with a delivery plan, IRB support and one all-inclusive quote.
Request a workflow review
Who this is for
- Research program managers and PRO program leads who own completion rates across clinics
- Clinical research coordinators and lab managers who run the day-to-day schedule
- Research IT and informatics teams who receive the data
- Department administrators who sign off on the grant budget
The usual trigger is typically one of three: a grant award with PRO aims, portal completion that stays low among certain patient groups, or a multi-hospital investigator-initiated study about to start.
Instruments: PROMIS, FACIT and your own questions
We deliver PROMIS short forms, PROMIS CAT, FACIT measures and your own study items. When your study needs CAT, we run it through the HealthMeasures Assessment Center API. If your institution already has an Assessment Center license, we can use it. If not, we obtain one for the project, and licensing and hosting are part of one all-inclusive project quote. You get T-scores too: for many CATs they come straight from the API and show in the platform, and for most short and long forms we calculate them from the scoring formulas. For background, see PROMIS basics from HealthMeasures. For instrument detail, see our pages on PROMIS surveys by automated phone call and secure SMS and FACIT and PROMIS measures by voice, SMS and secure messaging.
Channels that reach portal non-responders
Most programs use more than one channel, so every enrolled patient has a way to answer that works for them.
Scheduled outbound calls at the time each patient prefers, or a call-in line, toll-free or local. Patients answer on the keypad, or speak when you want their own words, with spoken answers recorded and transcribed and the original audio kept. Prompts can be recorded by a human voice or set up with text-to-speech. It works on any phone, including a landline.
Short check-ins and reminders by text, or a text that links to a secure survey page for longer instruments. Patients authenticate before answering, and protected health information stays out of the body of the text. Our page on SMS and hybrid secure messaging for PRO surveys explains when to use each.
Similar to SMS to secure link, an email is sent out with a secure link.
Languages
PROMIS and FACIT items are delivered only in licensed translations. However, program prompts, reminders and your custom items can be set up in the languages your patients need through our multilingual voice and text surveys.
Running it across sites and departments
A program that spans three hospitals or five clinics should not mean one shared spreadsheet. Each site gets its own users, participant list, schedule, caller ID and escalation contacts, and coordinators see only their own patients. Exports are available per site, with a combined view for the PI or program lead.
Missed calls are retried by rule, and nonresponse is tracked, so a coordinator can follow up before a gap shows up in the data.
What your IRB or REB and security office will ask
We help you prepare answers for both reviews:
- Scripts and consent wording. You approve every call and text script before a patient hears or sees it.
- Recording, transcription and retention. You decide whether answers are recorded and transcribed, and how long data is kept.
- Access controls. Permissions by role and by site, limited to the people named in your protocol.
- BAA. We sign a business associate agreement where your program requires one.
- Security. IVR Lab is HIPAA compliant () and SOC 2 audited, and we are glad to talk with your security team.
- Data residency. Canadian data residency is available for studies whose REB requires participant data to stay in Canada.
Getting data back into your research database
Responses and scores are exported by participant ID as CSV, by scheduled SFTP, or through an API. Exports follow the field names and layout your data dictionary expects, so Research IT is not reshaping files every week. PROMIS T-scores arrive with the item responses.
How a program typically starts
- Share your instruments and schedule. Send the measures, sites, languages and visit windows, even in draft. We tell you plainly what we can and cannot do.
- Build and translate. We set up the call flows, texts and secure pages, load licensed translations, and send scripts for your IRB packet.
- Pilot with real participants. A small group at one site, so you can check wording, timing and the export before scale.
- Launch and monitor. Roll out site by site, with completion and nonresponse visible to each coordinator.
Publicly funded research groups may also want to read about our funding support for publicly funded research.
Talk to us about your PRO program
Send us your instrument list, sites and schedule, even rough ones. We will tell you how we would set it up and what your IRB will need from us, with one all-inclusive quote. For regulated studies, see our investigator-initiated and academic trials page.
Discuss your study workflow