title: ResearchMatch: a national registry to recruit volunteers for clinical research.
abstract: The authors designed ResearchMatch, a disease-neutral, Web-based recruitment registry to help match individuals who wish to participate in clinical research studies with researchers actively searching for volunteers throughout the United States. In this article, they describe ResearchMatch's stakeholders, workflow model, technical infrastructure, and, for the registry's first 19 months of operation, utilization metrics. Having launched volunteer registration tools in November 2009 and researcher registration tools in March 2010, ResearchMatch had, as of June 2011, registered 15,871 volunteer participants from all 50 states. The registry was created as a collaborative project for institutions in the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) consortium. Also as of June 2011, a total of 751 researchers from 61 participating CTSA institutions had registered to use the tool to recruit participants into 540 active studies and trials. ResearchMatch has proven successful in connecting volunteers with researchers, and the authors are currently evaluating regulatory and workflow options to open access to researchers at non-CTSA institutions.
authors: Office of Research Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA. paul.harris@vanderbilt.edu
authors: Paul A
authors: PA
authors: Harris
authors: Kirstin W
authors: KW
authors: Scott
authors: Laurie
authors: L
authors: Lebo
authors: Niknik
authors: N
authors: Hassan
authors: Chad
authors: C
authors: Lightner
authors: Jill
authors: J
authors: Pulley
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D028744:Ethics Committees, Research; D005260:Female; D006805:Human Experimentation; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D018579:Patient Selection; D012042:Registries; D035842:Research Subjects; D014481:United States