Research Match

ResearchMatch is a nonprofit program funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It helps to connect people interested in research studies with researchers from top medical centers across the U.S. This national volunteer research registry that brings together researchers and willing volunteers who want to get involved in research studies. It provides a secure, web-based approach to address a key barrier to advancing research: finding research participants. There is no cost to use ResearchMatch. You do, however, need materials approved by the IRB (details below).

ResearchMatch allows researchers to search for de-identified volunteers who have registered themselves as being interested in participating in research. The researcher creates a cohort of people that meet selected key inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study by using the filters on ResearchMatch and then sends their IRB approved message to potential volunteers via ResearchMatch.

Interested participants create a "profile" with their basic health information. This allows researchers to search for potential participants that meet certain criteria. The potential participant can be sent the IRB message about the study and can then choose whether to provide their contact information to the researcher. This is an excellent resource for researchers looking to identify potential participants outside of usual-care settings.

The researcher finds the contact information of those interested individuals on their ResearchMatch dashboard and can then contact them directly.

• Register for ResearchMatch here
• Need help? Free training for researchers occurs every 2nd Thursday of the month. You may also use this guide.
• Using ResearchMatch requires IRB approval. Please use the appropriate language in your application when requesting to use ResearchMatch.
• Here are some contact message examples.
• We recommend you use a REDCap survey/screening survey to recruit participants.