How Can We Increase the Efficiency of Human-Based Research?

Before starting to work in research, I imagined that most of my time would be spent working in a lab, always with participants and doing the 'real work' such as collecting data, reading and writing research papers. However, early on in my research experience, I quickly discovered that these activities comprised much less researchers' time than I had previously thought. Human research was more inefficient than I initially imagined.

To see how widespread this problem was, I recently asked over 70 fellow researchers if they were experiencing the same issues. I found that they, too, spend a vast proportion (~50%) of their time just trying to find participants and communicating with them via email to bring them in for a first research assessment visit. Several of them also commented that, due to this high administrative burden, they spend shockingly little time reading and writing research papers, especially during periods of data collection – which comprises most early career researchers' time.

The reality is that human researchers are significantly less efficient than they could be, meaning publications and advances in our respective fields are much slower than they otherwise could be.

Frustration with this overwhelming administrative burden became the catalyst for me to connect with my co-founder, Thomas, and start thinking about how a software solution could streamline these research processes.

The short answer is significantly.

To begin with, the initial problem is finding participants. When you start recruiting for your first research trial, you often rely on the methods that the other researchers in your group have used previously. You are then left to figure out for yourself what the best way to reach your potential participants is, depending on their demographics.

Because most research groups don't have a centralized participant bank from which they can contact people, they effectively have to start from zero.

This process will often look like:

• Spending hours creating your study poster.
• Walking around your city or university campus, putting up your posters.
• Trying to give talks in groups your potential participants might be in with the hope of convincing them to participate in your project.
• Desperately putting up social media posts in the hope people will get in contact with you.

Once you have some members of the public that respond to your adverts, you then must undertake lengthy communications via email to answer their questions about the project and make sure they meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Then begins the arduous task of trying to schedule them for their first screening visit, which rarely happens on the first pass. 

Even once this is done, researchers must send reminders to participants, ensuring they follow the study protocols closely. All of the above takes up significant time, and bandwidth and away from the arguably more important research tasks.

The result is that researchers (including myself) are very inefficient at finding participants and bringing them into the labs, meaning that research projects (and advances in our understanding) take significantly more time than they should due to the bottlenecks these inefficient processes create.

Study Stream aims to radically increase human research productivity by eliminating key bottlenecks in the recruitment and management of these projects.

For researchers, we aim to improve recruitment processes by allowing potential participants to find research projects in their area, find out more about the project, pre-screen themselves against the project criteria and book a call with the researcher to finalize pre-screening, which allows them to book in for their first study visit.

For potential participants, we aim to improve their experience of taking part in research by increasing the visibility of projects going on in their area, allowing them to learn more about the project, see if they're eligible for the project and then know when they'll be able to talk with the researcher at a time that suits them – all within 10 minutes. This is in stark contrast to the weeks of emailing backward and forward, which are equally burdensome to them and the researcher.

This changes the paradigm from researcher-led recruitment to participants booking in calls with the researcher with minimal involvement from the researchers themselves. This will make the whole process much faster, more efficient and more enjoyable for all parties involved.

Having spoken with researchers at various career stages, I understand that there can be a natural skepticism toward new technologies. Our platform isn't about replacing human interaction but enhancing it.

By directly addressing the pain points researchers consistently described – complex scheduling, endless emails and manual screening – we're offering a solution that we hope researchers intuitively recognize as necessary and that can improve their research productivity. 

We've developed Study Stream in consultation with researchers across multiple disciplines to ensure our platform offers flexibility for the wide range of research that requires humans to visit a laboratory.

We are also planning to work with our first 20 research group early adopters to ensure we can support the diverse needs of human researchers as we grow.

Our ultimate vision extends far beyond being a software platform. Our mission is to become a catalyst for radically accelerating human scientific research, globally. We don't want just to build a tool; we want to create a research community-driven marketplace that can reshape how participants and researchers interact and connect.

Over the next few years, we want to have thousands of participants across all demographics in all major cities where human-based research is being conducted. This means that when researchers need to recruit for a 50-person study, we can draw on this participant pool to complete recruitment in weeks instead of years – with the latter sadly often being the case.

By reducing the administrative burden for researchers, Study Stream can redirect time to more impactful tasks like reading and writing research papers and disseminating research that the broader community can also benefit from whilst also making participation in human research easier and more enjoyable, leading to greater participation rates for members of the public.

Combining these factors will mean that we can radically improve the speed at which we learn about ourselves, which is what Study Stream is all about.