Participant Notifications Overview

MyDataHelps Designer allows custom notifications to be sent to participants via the MyDataHelps app (a "push notification"), email, or SMS/text. You may create any number of custom notifications for your organization, share them across all your projects, and make them available in multiple languages. MyDataHelps Designer's advanced rules engine can send notifications based on a variety of conditions, including date, participant demographics, and more.

Notification Types

Refer to the Types of Participant Notifications article for more information.

MyDataHelps Designer can send three types of notifications:

• Push - an app notification "pushed" from MyDataHelps to the participant's mobile device.
• SMS - a text message sent to a mobile phone number.
• Email - an electronic mail message.

Push notifications will only be visible to the participant if they have the MyDataHelps app installed and have notifications enabled on their device. A participant's app notification settings can be checked from the Devices section on the participant's Support tab.

Creating Notifications

Refer to the Creating Participant Notifications article for more information.

MyDataHelps allows you the following flexibility when creating notifications:

• Copying existing notifications so that you don't have to start new notification configuration from scratch.
• Creating multi-lingual notifications to effectively communicate with participants whose preferred language is not English.
• Incorporating dynamic text replacement to display participant-entered information back to participants within notifications (e.g., address a participant by their first name, confirm a surgery date, etc.).

Delivering Notifications

Refer to the Delivering Participant Notifications article for more information.

MyDataHelps Designer's advanced rules engine can send notifications based on a variety of triggers, including:

• Date (e.g., weekly or on a specific date)
• Recent Activity (e.g., adherence, survey answers, enrollment, device usage, surgery date)
• Clinical Data (e.g., labs, medications)
• Participant Demographics (e.g., age, sex, date of birth)

Triggers may be simple (e.g., send notification at 2PM on Friday, August 7th) or involve more complex rules (e.g., send notification if a survey has not been completed in 17 days). Please see the Scheduling article for further information on automating notifications.

Additionally, you can use Segment Actions to send notifications to a group of participants based on pre-set criteria, or you can use the Notifications tab to send a notification to an individual participant.

Best Practices

Please find a few of our recommended best practices regarding notifications below:

• Always keep in mind the participant experience! Often fewer notifications are better to prevent alert fatigue. 
• If the participant is expected to use the mobile app, consider using push notifications that can take the participant directly to a survey or tab within the app.
• Use notifications when delivering any follow-up surveys to ensure participants are aware of new tasks.
• Deliver notifications as reminders for overdue surveys.
• Escalate overdue surveys or important information to coordinators with coordinator notifications.