Clinical trials face many challenges with meeting projected enrollment and retention goals. A study’s recruitment materials and messaging convey necessary key information and therefore serve as a critical first impression with potential participants. Yet study teams often lack the resources and skills needed to develop engaging, culturally tailored, and professional-looking recruitment materials. To address this gap, the Recruitment Innovation Center recently developed a Recruitment & Retention Materials Content and Design Toolkit, which offers research teams guidance, actionable tips, resources, and customizable templates for creating trial-specific study materials. This paper seeks to describe the creation and contents of this new toolkit.

Virtual reality (VR)-based rehabilitation has been widely implemented to maintain and increase patient motivation during therapy sessions. Researchers nowadays design VR-based rehabilitation by leveraging off-the-shelf VR devices for easy access and application. However, researchers need to implement additional custom hardware or incorporate a specific algorithm to perform a real-time evaluation of each therapeutic movement. This study aims to design and develop a system with features for recognizing and measuring the upper limb rehabilitation movement in VR using off-the-shelf VR devices such as VR headsets, controllers, and trackers. This system is bundled and distributed as a single toolkit to accommodate other researchers in providing the evaluation feature for their VR-based rehabilitation system. The user experiment was conducted to verify the usability of this proposed design system. The experiment results show that the system can recognize 16 upper limb movements and provide several measurement data that researchers can use in providing the evaluation feature based on their design requirements.

With the increasing utilization of machine learning (ML) to enhance products’ capabilities, the design research community has begun to explore how to support the conceptual design of ML-enhanced products. However, UX value creation of ML-enhanced products is still challenging because of ML's unique characteristics and numerous complex factors in conceptual design. To help designers create UX value for ML-enhanced products, we developed the UX value framework and the CoMLUX design process. The proposed framework describes how ML, stakeholders, and context co-create the UX value of ML-enhanced products, and identifies the growability and opacity of ML, helping designers systematically understand the co-creators while avoiding cognitive overload. The CoMLUX design process provides practical guidance for designing ML-enhanced products with growability and transparency. At last, we demonstrate the usage methods of the framework and process in an actual project and summarize the inspirations and limitations of our work.

The Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC) has created a toolkit of novel strategies to engage potential participants in response to recruitment and retention challenges associated with COVID-19 studies. The toolkit contains pragmatic, generalizable resources to help research teams increase awareness of clinical trials and opportunities to participate; produce culturally sensitive and engaging recruitment materials; improve consent and return of results processes; and enhance recruitment of individuals from populations disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This resource, the “RIC COVID-19 Recruitment and Retention Toolkit,” is available free online. We describe the toolkit and the community feedback used to author and curate this resource.

Crop wild relatives (CWR) are a vital source of traits for crop improvement – therefore, conserving CWR diversity is critical to ensure food, nutrition and economic security. Efficient CWR conservation planning is a critical first step to maintain this natural resource for future use. The development of National Strategic Action Plans (NSAPs) for the conservation and sustainable use of CWR is an effective means of conservation planning and also plays an important role in sensitizing policy makers and other stakeholders to the importance of CWR. Tools to guide and facilitate countries in CWR national conservation planning and NSAP development have been prepared, namely: an ‘Interactive Toolkit for CWR Conservation Planning’, a ‘Template for the Preparation of a NSAP for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of CWR’, a ‘Template for the Preparation of a Technical Background Document for a NSAP for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of CWR’, a ‘CWR Checklist and Inventory Data Template’ and an ‘Occurrence Data Collation Template’. In this short communication, we briefly explain what these tools are, how they were developed, how they can be used and where they can be found.

The Dissemination and Implementation Research Core, a research methods core from the Clinical and Translation Science Award at Washington University in St. Louis Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, developed toolkits about dissemination and implementation (D&I) concepts (e.g., D&I outcomes, strategies). This paper reports on the development of the toolkits. These toolkits respond to 3 identified needs for capacity building in D&I research: resources for investigators new to the D&I field, consolidation of tools, and limitations in local contexts.

When a large chemical incident occurs and people are injured, public health agencies need to be able to provide guidance and respond to questions from the public, the media, and public officials. Because of this urgent need for information to support appropriate public health action, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the US Department of Health and Human Services has developed the Assessment of Chemical Exposures (ACE) Toolkit. The ACE Toolkit, available on the ATSDR website, offers materials including surveys, consent forms, databases, and training materials that state and local health personnel can use to rapidly conduct an epidemiologic investigation after a large-scale acute chemical release. All materials are readily adaptable to the many different chemical incident scenarios that may occur and the data needs of the responding agency. An expert ACE team is available to provide technical assistance on site or remotely. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:631–632)

Background: A growing body of research evidence indicates that improving communication with people living with dementia (PLWD) has a positive effect on their quality of life. Policy initiatives internationally highlight the prevalence of poor communication practices in care environments in general and medical contexts in particular as priority areas for improvement. Currently available communication interventions exhibit shortcomings, and their application remains unusual.

Methods: A spectrum of multidisciplinary professional and lay stakeholders, including PLWD, took part in an iterative consultation process in the UK. This aimed to develop a communications advice package which would meet their needs, and involved observation of practice in a variety of care contexts and semi-structured focus group and individual interviews.

Results: Lay participants reported dissatisfaction with current communicative practices, particularly during contact with medical professionals. Both lay and professional participants reported general dissatisfaction with currently available communication advice. An agreed version of a dementia toolkit for effective communication (DEMTEC) was produced. This consists of three “levels”. The foundation Level 1 details beliefs about the psychosocial effects of dementia on communication, as well as empowering approaches to communication involving PLWD. Level 2 consists of practical considerations and advice in eight key areas. Level 3 uses case studies to show how the principles and advice in preceding levels are applicable to individuals in different care contexts and at different stages of dementia.

Conclusion: The project has produced a free-to-users instrument that is empirically supported and adaptable to individual PLWD and to a range of health, care and sociocultural environments.

A goldsmith's toolkit found in an Iberian tomb reveals ground-breaking details about the manufacture of the gold ornaments for which this culture is renowned. Two blowpipes for joining gold with a high precision jet of air unlock the techniques of brazing, granulation and filigree. The authors go on to propose that the buried man was no ordinary craftsman, but a member of the warrior class in control of producing the treasures of the age.

Objectives: Europe has many health technology assessment (HTA) agencies, each producing their own HTA reports. Adapting HTA reports for different contexts could reduce the need for multiple reports on the same health technology with resultant saving of time and resources. This study aims to examine and understand the process of adaptation, and to develop a toolkit that would help the adaptation of reports produced by other countries.

Methods: The methods used were a review of the literature; a survey of twenty-nine European HTA organizations, two rounds of a Delphi survey, a face-to-face meeting of twenty-one European network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) representatives, iterative rounds of review, and two rounds of quality assurance testing (termed applicability testing).

Results: Descriptions of previous examples of adaptation in the literature are sparse. Most respondents had previous experience in adapting reports, and all believed that adaptation was useful, and there was the ability to benefit from the use of a toolkit to aid in the process. EUnetHTA Partners developed and tested an adaptation toolkit. The toolkit is composed of a series of checklists and resources that identify or clarify the relevance, reliability, and transferability of data and information from existing reports.

Conclusions: Consensus of opinion from twenty-nine European organizations/networks has indicated that the adaptation of HTA reports would be desirable and beneficial. A toolkit was developed to help with the adaptation of HTA reports produced in other settings. This collection of resources is available for use by all HTA agencies and can be accessed at: http://www.eunethta.net/upload/WP5/EUnetHTA_HTA_Adaptation_Toolkit_October08.pdf.

Objectives: Adapting health technology assessment (HTA) reports for different contexts could reduce the need for multiple reports on the same health technology with resultant saving of time and resources. This article describes an instrument, the adaptation toolkit, which has been developed to aid in the process of adaptation of HTA reports.

Methods: The toolkit was developed by a partnership of HTA agencies and networks from across Europe. The role of the toolkit is to guide the user through the process of selecting possible relevant material from these report(s), assessing the relevance, reliability, and transferability of the material, and adapting it for the desired context.

Results: The adaptation toolkit has been developed, it comprises a collection of resources that help the user assess whether data and information in existing HTA reports should and could be adapted for their own setting. The toolkit contains two sections: a preliminary speedy sifting section and the main toolkit. The main toolkit includes five domains: (i) technology use and development, (ii) safety, (iii) effectiveness (including efficacy), (iv) economic evaluation, and (v) organizational aspects. Legal, ethical, and social aspects are beyond the scope of the toolkit. The toolkit is designed for the adaptation of evidence synthesis rather than primary research.

Conclusions: The completed current version of the toolkit contains checklists and resources to aid in the adaptation of HTA reports. This collection of resources is available for use by all HTA agencies and can be accessed at: http://www.eunethta.net/upload/WP5/EUnetHTA_HTA_Adaptation_Toolkit_October08.pdf..