EasyMedStat 4.9: a public link for your ePRO questionnaires, and a redesigned questionnaires list

This release answers a recurring request from research teams: being able to share a questionnaire with respondents who are not yet patients in the study, without an individual invitation and without creating a record beforehand.

The public link for your ePRO questionnaires

Until now, every ePRO questionnaire assumed a patient record already created in EasyMedStat and an invitation sent individually by email. That covers the follow-up of an established cohort well, but not open recruitment: a QR code displayed at a conference, a poster in a waiting room, a link relayed in a newsletter or on social media.

4.9 introduces a new Public link tab in the questionnaire configuration, between scheduling and emails. There you create a link that anyone can open to answer, with the patient record created automatically in the series.

• Several independent links per questionnaire, each with its own name, its own permanent URL and its own count of included patients. You can therefore create one link per channel, poster, conference, newsletter, and follow separately what each one brings in.

• The patient record is created as soon as the questionnaire starts, not on final submission. An interrupted response is therefore never lost: it relies on the save and resume mechanism already in place in the eCRF.

• An identity screen is shown only if your series requires it. The respondent fills in exactly the fields configured in your identity variable (first name, last name, birth date, email, gender) and nothing else. Death date and last follow-up date are never requested; the inclusion date is set automatically when the record is created. The screen is translated into the respondent’s language.

• The origin of the record stays visible. The patient header shows a link icon followed by the name of the link through which they entered the study. A record created through a standard invitation shows no badge.

• A link can be deactivated and reactivated at any time. Deactivation takes effect immediately for any new opening, without affecting records already created, and remains reversible.

• The generic consent message and its checkbox, identical to those of every other EasyMedStat questionnaire, apply unchanged.

• Public links coexist with individual invitations on the same questionnaire. There is no exclusive mode to choose.

The feature is included in the standard e-PRO plan, with no additional tier and no dedicated permission. Each link is protected by server-side rate limits, which block bulk or automated requests.

One limit should be known before sharing a link: there is no automatic deduplication. Every opening of the link creates a separate record, including when the same respondent refreshes the page or answers twice. This is a deliberate choice, email addresses are not stored in clear text on the pseudonymisation side, which makes automatic matching impossible without weakening data protection. We would rather live with that constraint than offer approximate deduplication. So plan for a duplicate check on receipt, as you would for any open collection.

This first version does not yet offer default values per link, an expiry date, API access or a per-link filter in the patient list. In a multicentric series, the Site variable is left unanswered unless you explicitly add it as a question in the questionnaire.

A redesigned questionnaires list

The page listing your questionnaires said little: neither the scheduling in place nor the existence of a public link appeared there. Above all, viewing a questionnaire’s properties, let alone editing them, required pausing it first, and therefore interrupting the sending in progress. Only its active or inactive status escaped that constraint.

It has been reworked to give that reading at a glance:

• The total number of questionnaires is shown in the title, and an + Add questionnaire button opens the creation flow from the top right.

• The Status column shows whether the questionnaire is active or inactive, with a toggle to change its state without leaving the list.

• The Public links column shows the number of links configured, or their absence, and opens the corresponding section directly, including when no link exists yet.

• The Scheduling and Monitoring columns give the scheduling rule in place and direct access to the monitoring page.

• The step-by-step guide is gone. It required birth dates and email addresses that are no longer necessary. A warning replaces it when no questionnaire in the study is active, since in that situation neither sending nor public links work.

An active questionnaire can now be opened and reviewed in full, read-only. Scheduling remains the only element that cannot be changed while the questionnaire is running, so that already scheduled sending is not shifted.

Fixes and improvements

• Automations combining a real-time alert and a dynamic variable no longer return an error on confirmation or cancellation.
• Private files are now always served over a secure connection.



You will find the detailed procedure for creating and sharing a public link in our help centre, and our support team remains available for any question about configuring your questionnaires.

Discover public links for your ePRO questionnaires