IDIs: IT professionals and biomedical engineers, UK

When a designer of MedTech tools for the healthcare industry came to us for healthcare recruitment, we were ready to support them. It was our first time working together, and we connected with their mission to smooth out the challenges that healthcare professionals face when working in a busy hospital. The purpose of the research was to evaluate a new tool in the healthcare digital ecosystem in order to aid device management in hospitals. Our client was hoping to gain insights into how easy the tool was for healthcare professionals to use in their role, and whether the tool meets the needs of their intended users, a method of research that we have extensive experience in.

We were asked to recruit an even mix of biomedical or clinical engineers working in hospitals, and IT professionals working in a hospital setting in the UK. Participants needed to have been working in their role for more than two years and not work in research and development or on a consulting basis. We were also asked to avoid recruiting any participants who were already affiliated with any medical device or pharmaceutical company, to reduce the risk of bias.

The FieldworkHub team recruited biomedical and clinical engineers and IT professionals from different hospitals across the UK. We made sure to validate that each engineer had experience evaluating, acquiring, installing, and maintaining either new or existing surgical tools or devices. We also ensured they had experience with preventative maintenance (including output verification, electrical safety, troubleshooting) of operating room equipment. We also validated that each IT professional had some experience with preventative maintenance of operating room equipment, and was based in a UK hospital.

We scheduled each 60-minute in-depth interview with our participants, which was held via WebEx, liaising with our specialist healthcare moderators to provide the highest quality outcome. The WebEx platform was used to host our interviews in this particular case due to its enhanced security features, which helped put our participants at ease when discussing sensitive challenges within their role. Our client was pleased with the high quality recruits we delivered and their engagement in the research.