Meeting the Growing Demand for QR Code Usage.

Overview

With QR codes becoming more common in the public, the NIH All of Us Research Program consortium partners expressed a need for custom marketing assets with their exclusive QR codes. These QR codes aim to drive traffic to their microsites, increasing awareness and enrollment. The consortium partners usually rely on QR code creation websites. However, these services often require user accounts and subscriptions, frequently with restrictions on the quantity of free QR code downloads and storage.

Approach

The requirement was for a CMS solution that would grant All of Us Program consortium partners a user-friendly, cost-free, subscription-independent means of generating and preserving QR codes within the All of Us platform ecosystem, ensuring ease of use and accessibility. In my role as the Director of Systems Development and leader of the digital product team, my team and I conducted extensive research on various developer resources to identify a solution that met specific criteria for creating QR codes. This solution needed to be user-friendly, capable of generating static QR codes, and supporting the download of various image file formats. Additionally, it had to be seamlessly integrated with Drupal, the CMS platform mandated by the NIH. We also had to find a secure and private solution for storing consortium partners' QR codes, with access permissions in place.

Results

The QR Code Generator introduction offered All of Us consortium partners a comprehensive solution, enabling them to generate static QR codes and securely store them in a database linked to the Asset Portal. This solution led to a 6% decrease in government grant expenditures, delivering cost savings for stakeholders, and a remarkable 73% increase in website engagement.

Takeaway

To meet the growing demands of All of Us consortium partners for personalized QR codes and a cost-free, subscription-free storage solution, we conceived and engineered the QR Code Generator. This innovation has notably amplified website engagement, resulting in increased downloads, and has received acclaim for its user-friendly accessibility. Not only has it translated into time and cost savings, but it has also empowered consortium partners with a dependable marketing tool for promoting awareness and outreach to potential participants.