Thank you for your interest in the BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker Pilot Study!

We developed the BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker to help clinic staff who need a better system for tracking patient appointments, reminder calls and medication assistance program applications.

We have heard from staff at clinics that some of the information they need to manage PrEP patients is not easily stored in or extracted from medical records, and PrEP navigators or counselors need to create their own systems for tracking patients …

… but who has time to build a system and do their job?

The BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker is designed to capture key information in Microsoft Excel, allowing clinic staff access to a free, secure, locally stored, and easy-to-manage system.

In this pilot study, we are asking staff who work with PrEP patients to try out the Tracker and give us feedback on how it works—and, more importantly, how we can make it better!

CLICK HERE to be taken to the survey.

Study FAQs

  • The BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker (“the Tracker”) allows you to input information about your PrEP clients, including their upcoming visits and application for medication assistance programs. The Tracker facilitates documentation of current PrEP status, appointment scheduling, prescription renewal information, past patient outreach, and patients that have been flagged for follow-up. Among other features, the PrEP Patient Tracker allows you to:

    • Search for patients who have upcoming visits and need reminder calls

    • Search for patients who need reapplication for PrEP assistance programs

    • Search for patients who have just started PrEP and might need a check-in

    • Click on each patient in the search bar to open up their individual contact information and a tracking form to log your contact with them.

  • We developed the BLUPrInt Excel PrEP Patient Tracker to help address some of the issues and unmet needs staff face in tracking and non-clinical management of their PrEP patients. Feedback from participants in this study will be used to adapt and refine the BLUPrInt Excel PrEP Patient Tracker to make a next (hopefully better!) “beta” version. We are interested in your experience using the Tracker and your suggestions about how to make it as useful as possible. Your survey responses will be used to create an updated version of the PrEP Tracker will be made available for free to download from the BLUPrInt website.

  • This study is for people who:

    • work in a setting that provides PrEP to patients

    • are responsible for responsible for tracking and managing PrEP patients

    • want to try out a new, free, excel-based system for tracking appointments, reminder calls, and medication assistance applications.

    1. Fill out our screener (link here or below) to sign up for the study.

    2. We will send you an initial online survey (~20 minutes) about your previous experience tracking PrEP patients and your interests in a new PrEP tracking system.

    3. We will then send you the BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker, that you can download to your work computer. We will also send you a user manual and some videos about how to use the Tracker.

    4. We will send you two more surveys about your experiences using the tracker, one at two month and one at four months.

    5. We will give you a $40 online gift card as a “thank you” after each survey. If you complete all three surveys, we will send you an additional $30 bonus.

    6. The BLUPrInt PrEP Patient Tracker is yours to keep…and you will be first on the list to receive any updated “beta” version that we create based on your feedback!

    Long story short:

    You fill out three surveys over a four-month period, you receive a free Excel tracker for use with your patients, and you get up to $150 in online gift cards…all for giving us your feedback on how to make a tracker as useful as possible!

  • If you are interested in participating, please send an email to bluprint@hunter.cuny.edu with the subject “PrEP Patient Tracker Study”. We will email you with a link to the first survey, and a copy of the Tracker and manuals.

  • At the end of the first survey, there will be a question that will allow you to download the PrEP Patient Tracker. You’ll also be able to download a user manual and a sample tracker with mock-patient entries

  • We have created a user manual and some brief videos to get you started. We’re hoping you’ll be able to get the hang of it pretty quickly, but ultimately, we’re not sure. That’s part of what we’re hoping you’ll help us learn by piloting the PrEP Patient Tracker!

  • The research team is not asking for and will not have access to individual patient-level data at any point in the study. The Tracker is yours to download…you can save it on your local computer and we will are not asking for any patient data or files in return. We are merely asking you to answer questions about your experience using the Tracker, and your PrEP patient tracking and management strategies generally.

  • The Tracker was created in Microsoft Excel—as opposed to a cloud-based sharing platform—so that it can be stored on a local drive. We recommend keeping it on a secure desktop in your facility, and password protecting the file itself. We include instructions on how to do so in our user manual.

  • We will store survey data in encrypted files on a CUNY-affiliated Dropbox account. The data file with the survey questions and the file with participant emails for incentives will be saved separately. Thus, saved survey data will be de-identified. Only approved researchers on this protocol will have access to identifiable data files.

  • BLUPrInt (http://www.hivbluprint.org) is an implementation science research study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that aims to develop data-driven tools and resources that can accelerate the equitable implementation and scale-up of PrEP programs.

    BLUPrINT is a joint project of researchers at the Hunter Alliance for Research & Translation (HART) at the City University of New York, and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) at Columbia University, in collaboration with clinical partners across the U.S. We’re working together to develop best practices related to PrEP implementation strategies and cultivation of PrEP implementation tools.

  • If you have any questions, you can contact Dr. Sarit Golub, Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator for this study at 212.396.6304