PEACH2 Nudge Platform
2024 · Digital Health · Research Platforms · Messaging Systems · Backend Engineering
PEACH2 Nudge Platform
I contributed software engineering and backend systems development for PEACH2: Promoting Engagement and COVID-19 Testing for Health, a randomized behavioral intervention study focused on adults in Georgia affected by diabetes or diabetes risk. The study evaluated whether weekly SMS-based health engagement messages, together with follow-up prompts about symptoms and COVID-19 testing, could improve participant reporting and support ongoing health engagement over an approximately 16-week intervention period.
For readers outside behavioral or digital health research, a nudge message is a brief, behaviorally informed prompt designed to encourage a desired action without removing participant choice. In this project, nudges were delivered primarily as SMS text messages to encourage health engagement and collect participant responses related to symptoms and COVID-19 testing.
My Contributions
In collaboration with Dr. Mary Beth Weber, I built and maintained the backend infrastructure that supported participant messaging operations for the study.
My contributions included:
- Developing a protected participant database for study records and contact information
- Implementing Twilio-based SMS workflows for nudge delivery and inbound response capture
- Building backend services and APIs for publishing, assigning, resending, and monitoring nudges through a web-based administrative interface
- Implementing authentication so only authorized research staff could access participant messaging functions
- Adding message-status tracking and webhook-based delivery logging for auditing and monitoring
- Building automated registration and synchronization pipelines that ingested study data from REDCap, validated enrollment records, and provisioned participants for messaging workflows
- Implementing supporting automation for participant processing, dashboard synchronization, and status updates across connected systems
- Adding operational tooling for backup, participant administration, reporting, and audit-ready export of message activity and response history
Platform Features
The system combined several technologies into a practical research messaging platform:
- Python backend services for workflow automation and API-driven operations
- MongoDB for protected participant and messaging data storage
- Twilio for SMS delivery, inbound response handling, and delivery-status callbacks
- Web authentication and session-based access control for research administrators
- REDCap integrations for participant intake, synchronization, and study workflow automation
- Scheduled job orchestration for onboarding, recurring nudges, follow-up queries, resends, and offboarding
- Reporting and audit tooling for delivery history, participant responses, and operational review
Study Context
The platform turned the PEACH2 intervention design into a functioning operational system for the study team. My work covered protected participant data handling, SMS nudge delivery, administrator authentication, REDCap-driven registration automation, message tracking, backup, reporting, and audit support so the intervention could be run and monitored reliably.