Case Study: REACH (UNL Reach Lab) achieves secure offline field data collection and rapid HIV/HCV insights with Voxco

Field interviewers establish secure connections in rural Puerto Rico with Voxco personal interviewing tools

Reach Lab (Research, Evaluation & Analysis for Community Health) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln faced the challenge of surveying a geographically dispersed, transient population of people who inject drugs in rural Puerto Rico to study HIV and Hepatitis C risk. Traditional sampling and mail-based methods wouldn’t work, so Reach Lab chose Voxco’s personal interviewing/CAPI solution (Voxco Mobile Offline) to enable secure, offline field data collection and rapid transmission back to UNL.

Voxco deployed offline-capable interview software with bilingual questionnaires on field laptops, daily synchronization to UNL’s secure servers, automatic clearing of data from devices, and live monitoring of remote teams. Using Voxco, Reach Lab completed over 300 interviews and HIV/HCV tests in under two months, began immediate analysis of results, and reports markedly improved efficiency and data security one year into the study.

Reach Lab

Melissa Welch-Lazoritz

Project Director