Increasing evaluation team capacity through creation of an innovative digital tool

Evaluation teams have been critical to the success of Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) programs funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Given the limited resources often available to evaluation teams and the growing emphasis on impact evaluation and continuous quality improvement (CQI), CTSA programs may need to develop innovative strategies to build capacity for effectively implementing CQI and impact evaluation, while still tracking commonly reported metrics. To address this challenge, the Boston University (BU) Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) partnered with the BU Hariri's Software and Application Innovation Lab (SAIL) to develop a web-based digital tool, known as TrackImpact, that streamlines data collection, saving significant time and resources, and increasing evaluation team capacity for other activities. Time and cost saving analyses are used to demonstrate how we increased evaluation team capacity by using this innovative digital tool.