Compared to ExpiWell
First Impression: A Work-in-Progress Product
Setting up a study in ExpiWell is fairly easy. There is a clear flow for researchers to define surveys, add screening questions, configure prompt schedules, and distribute the study. Then all is set and we can wait for the data to flow in. There is a clean interface and easy-to-adjust configurations.
The problem starts when trying to implement a protocol with medium-level complexity, as seen in many real-world studies. Often ExpiWell is missing capabilities that are expected to be part of any EMA software.
The first example is the branching and skip patterns. ExpiWell offers a very basic branching, which is not suitable for any real-world survey. There is no option to branch based on responses to other surveys or add conditions based on multiple questions. The most advanced branching is "Display a question if the response to another question in the current survey is X". For anything beyond that, you are out of luck!
Another example is surveys triggering logics, called Schedules. They are
defined as study-wide rather than only for a survey. There are only 3 options:
Calendar (for absolute dates), Rolling (for relative dates), and Static (user
triggered). Whichever you choose, that will be the entire study! That is a major
limitation for many studies.
Even within this seemingly simple Schedule framework, there are many points of confusion. The first is that it's not clear what a survey availability time window is, what a Notification is, or how exactly a survey is expired. If the survey is available to the participant from the start of the time window, why is a notification sent at a later time? Or why is expiry measured relative to the notification prompt, rather than survey availability? Unfortunately, the documentation does not help much with clarifying these questions either. So, the only option is to do a trial and error using the website and the app!
Things get more complicated when you include the Event Triggering feature. This feature allows you to adjust the Schedule's attributes (start time, end time, addition, removal, etc) upon a certain event. This makes it very hard to understand and debug the flow of a study.
There are other minor examples as well. For example, Fitbit data collection only works when a survey is prompted, Participant Payment is done via the Audit Logs tab, or offline notifications exist but you are strongly discouraged from using it.
When considering all these, the feeling is that ExpiWell is more of a work-in-progress than a mature product. Many features require considerable further development or even a complete redesign before they can be reliably used in a wide range of studies.
Feature Category Comparison
The following table compares Avicenna and ExpiWell on different categories of features:
| Category | Superior |
|---|---|
| Study Setup & Deployment |  |
| ExpiWell leaves many features in this category to be desired, such as audit logs, participation management, consent, or a multilingual interface. However, the features it offers, such as enrollment and screening, are well-implemented and easy to use. | |
| Notifications | |
| ExpiWell's notification is very basic. There is almost no customization nor any reporting and monitoring of the notifications. This is unfortunate because notifying participants is the single most important factor to increase compliance. | |
| Participant Activities | |
| ExpiWell's Schedule system is fairly basic and yet confusing. Their lack of any scripting makes the platform very limited. In the absence of session reporting and management features, researchers are left to guess what will be prompted to participants. | |
| Survey | |
| ExpiWell's Survey Editor is clean and easy to navigate. Many features are missing, but the question types that are implemented satisfy most use cases. | |
| Interventions & Cognitive Tasks | |
| While Avicenna's score is higher in this category, neither Avicenna nor ExpiWell offers extensive features related to cognitive tasks. | |
| Gamification & Rewarding | Tie |
| Neither Avicenna nor ExpiWell offers any features related to Gamification and Rewarding. | |
| Software Security & Reliability | |
| The main issue with ExpiWell's security is the lack of a proper permission management system. ExpiWell's permission management system only supports 3 static roles, and even those are defined at the account level. This means when you permit another colleague, they have the same level of permission across all studies of your account! Due to this major flaw, we assumed they do not provide any functionality related to roles and permissions. | |
| Sensor Data & Wearables | |
| ExpiWell's sensor-based data collection is limited to only GPS and Fitbit, and even then, there are surprising shortcomings, such as data collection only when survey responses are asked. | |
| Participant app | |
| ExpiWell's app provides basic features as seen in other EMA apps but is missing more unique features such as customizing interface, profile setup, and so on. | |
| Data Access & Analysis | |
| ExpiWell's reporting and visualization functionality is very limited and boils down to a static table and one option to export data. | |
| Other | Tie |
| ExpiWell offers a good interface for license purchase and monitoring. But to the best of our knowledge, they do not offer custom on-premise deployments. | |
For details, please check the comparison spreadsheet.