The Research Assistant Organizer is a web application that addresses the time- consuming, repetitive, and laborious tasks associated with managing a large-scale, volunteer- based clinical research organization. It has been designed with real pain points of research coordinators and research assistants from the Equal Access Clinic research division, an organization that is conducting clinical studies in digital health technologies with a large group of primarily University of Florida undergraduate and post-graduate students. The major pain points of the individuals in the organization are in the scheduling of shifts and communication between members, both issues that are rooted in the fact that volunteer workers, especially college students, have highly variable availabilities from semester to semester and week to week.
Created in React.js, the Research Assistant Organizer is targeted to be used on mobile and web platforms, as many of our users will likely be accessing the app on their phone during patient recruitment shifts, or on their computers at home. This decision was also made with the fact that Android tablets were often in use as part of the Equal Access Clinic research studies and having the ability to easily access the app in part of a future expansion could prove valuable. The Research Assistant Organizer can be viewed as a variation of a work scheduling software with a few unique twists that help the app fill this niche of volunteer clinical research, including the ability to generate highly variable schedules and integrations with multiple highly used messaging platforms to ensure user engagement and dissemination of information throughout the organization.