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A match made in (research) heaven

Posted on | July 14, 2010 | 1,578 views |

New service links researchers with volunteers for their studies

By Julia Harris

Lots of people give blood; many are signed on as organ donors; some people even sell their own plasma. But how many of us can say we’ve taken part in a clinical trial for a new diabetes drug, or volunteered for a study on how soy affects the severity of asthma symptoms?

Here’s a hint: Not many.

And that’s something Rose Hallarn, the director for clinical trials recruitment at Ohio State’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science, wants to change.

“You can have the best research study in the world but if you can’t get anybody into that study, it’s going to close and you’re not going to get the findings you were hoping to find,” Hallarn said.

“Because there’s certainly not a lack of research studies going on in the world, and there’s not a lack of people who are willing to volunteer. It’s just a question of them finding each other.”

Enter a new kind of matchmaking service that promises to make the pairings happen easier and faster: A national registry, coordinated by Vanderbilt University, called ResearchMatch. It launched last November and, as of early July, had more than 8,500 people signed up as volunteers, 295 registered researchers, 158 active studies and 53 participating institutions.

Any researcher affiliated with an institution that has secured a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health (Ohio State shares a $34 million award with Nationwide Children’s Hospital) is eligible to use ResearchMatch — free of charge — to recruit for his or her studies.

The site itself is easy to use and non-invasive in terms of the amount of personal information it requests of would-be volunteers — a feature that Hallarn hopes will entice more people to sign on. She also stresses the fact that you don’t need to have a specific medical condition or other special circumstances to sign up; many large studies are looking specifically for healthy volunteers.

And for Ohio State researchers, Hallarn has done much of the legwork in making sure it’s relatively painless for them to use the site as well, compiling documents and answering questions for university Institutional Review Boards.

“Across this university, there are probably more than 1,000 studies going on,” Hallarn said. “And when a research study doesn’t recruit in a timely manner, it’s closed, which is a very sad thing because you’ve wasted a lot of money and time.”

There are more than 1,050 volunteers currently signed up in Ohio. One of them is Michelle Bannister, a fourth-year senior majoring in communications at Ohio State, who had a bit of an insider connection in that she works with Hallarn as a student assistant, helping to recruit research participants.

She admits to feeling somewhat guilty in her role since she had never been in a study herself. ResearchMatch seemed a great way to change that. “I wanted to get involved and be a research participant to practice what I preach,” she said. “The registration process was so easy and just all-around user-friendly, as it should be. It’s a tool for us to be a part of something that is going to better our lives and other people’s lives in the future.”

Bannister was contacted to participate in a comparison study about the effects of a drug on blood sugar levels in Caucasians and African Americans. It may well have been the first successful ResearchMatch matchup for Ohio State, Hallarn says, though she is confident that with time and exposure the potential for future connections is limitless — and not just for the state of Ohio.

“The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, wanted people to participate in a survey study. They used ResearchMatch to send out 1,200 invitations and completed their entire study without ever having to print out any obnoxious posters or flyers,” Hallarn said. “Which, as we all know, takes a ton of money and time and isn’t at all targeted, so you’re lucky if someone sees it, let alone responds to it.”

On the conference table in front of her was a stack of materials about ResearchMatch; she reached out to touch the corner of one brochure with a kind of tired fondness. “This isn’t all of my job, but it’s a big part of it,” she said. “But there’s nothing like this service in the world, and it just takes time to get the exposure we need. The potential for educating the public about the importance of being part of research is wonderful.”

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