M3 houses many features for Westat project teams to support day-to-day operations as well as the automation of routine tasks.
Task/Protocol Manager
The core of M3 is its configurable task manager that is used to support the study protocol. The M3 task manager works 24/7 monitoring data and executing tasks and moving data around. The current state and provenance of each task is captured by M3 and supports project operations and reporting.
Common Data Model supporting complex study design and subject models
Meta-Data driven protocol engine
Task Manager processes logic on a flow-basis
Provides near real-time movement and control of cases / tasks
Supports survey tasks and routing
Supports communications protocol
The system coordinates the routing of work between modes based on rules defined by the project. It maintains the status of all cases across all modes of production and can generate study status reports for all production modes. M3 can also be used to route cases to other survey support systems such as data editing and coding systems. In this, it provides standard survey services such as notifications to schedule and generate e-mail, text, or hardcopy invitations, reminders, and other communications to study participants, as well as incentive payment management.
Types of supported subjects
- Import and management of sample groups
- Import transformation features allow for flexible sample file formats from Excel
- Paper data collections systems
- BFOS
- MFOS or Laptop GPS
Field Period based protocols
- Mailing management for participant notification or other communications
- Pull-based mailing queues
- Exchange mailbox integration for monitoring email (bounces, undeliverable)
- Manages movement of emails / bounce-backs to email folder structure
Systems Integration
M3 is a system integration hub that has a variety of plug-in and configurable adapters for standard Westat systems for data collection, as well as for other study operations support.
Web Data collection systems
Phone Data collection systems
Paper Data collection systems
BFOS
MFOS or Laptop GPS
Eagle
Pd3 (Dashboard)
BEST (biospecimens)
Zoom Video Interviewing
Study Operations (SMS)
M3 includes a web operations portal that provides study management features for projects.
Sample Management
- Import and management of sample groups
- Import transformation features allow for flexible sample file formats from Excel
- Paper data collections systems
- BFOS
- MFOS or Laptop GPS
Mailing Management
- Mailing management for participant notification or other communications
- Pull-based mailing queues
- Exchange mailbox integration for monitoring email (bounces, undeliverable)
- Manages movement of emails / bounce-backs to email folder structure
M3 handles standard and complex study protocols, and supports a number of subject types such as individual participants, households, or organizations. Roster management can be done in M3 or in your project’s system (e.g. PETS, BFOS).
Services
M3 exposes some of its features through web services. This allows projects to continue to use their own systems, but not burden programming staff with requests that M3 is already setup to do for you. This includes, electronic incentives, card incentives, texting, and phone app notifications.
Incentives
- Amazon
Texting and Phone App Notifications
- Email address
CARI Coding
- Packaging of files for CARI
- Return of CARI Scores
- Survey Authentication and Prefill Data
Tracing
M3 has extensive tracing management capabilities including queue and role-based management of cases, automated extracting of address, phone, and email from cut-and-pasted text, and scoring based on the known ‘trust worthiness’ of each data source.
Address maintenance
- QC on City/State/ZIP
- Merging addresses
Scoring record updates to determine the best
- Address
- Phone number
- Email address
Case level tracing
- Cases can be taken out of the current protocol while in tracing
- Cases can be in tracing and in the current protocol simultaneously
Help Desk
M3 has out-of-the-box help desk functions such as the ability to create inbound or outbound Electronic Records of Contact (EROCs). M3 can be integrated with your project email box to sort emails, create EROCs, and help manage issues generated with emails.
- Search participants
- Create inbound or outbound Electronic Records of Contact (EROCs)
- Link EROCs to participants
- Record finalization statuses for cases
- Manage participant contact data
- Manage Project Email Boxes
- Manage participant issues