RecruitMe Website: Opportunities for Individuals Interested in Participating in Clinical Trials
Hundreds of clinical trials are in progress every year at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and the main hub to help patients and healthy volunteers find trials of interest is only a click away on the RecruitMe website. A clinical trial is a study that aims to answer a question about the safety or efficacy of a drug, a device, or other intervention and is an important research tool for advancing medical knowledge and patient care.
“RecruitMe was conceived over seven years ago in response to the need for a central location for patients to find clinical trials being conducted at CUIMC,” said Helen Kim, PharmD, executive director of the Clinical Trials Office. “Our ultimate mission was to develop an intuitive recruitment tool that provided an easy-to-navigate gateway to clinical trials at Columbia.” The goal: Provide a searchable website for anyone interested in participating in research studies and connect potential participants to investigators. It has become a valuable resource for patients and healthy volunteers who can search the site by medical condition, view the latest studies, and register to be contacted for future studies of interest.
More than 500 clinical trials are currently listed on the RecruitMe site. They range from trials studying the impact of sleep disruptions on cardiovascular health to testing a new drug for patients with cancers that have not responded to other therapies.
People who volunteer for clinical studies are often patients seeking access to novel treatments, but healthy individuals who want to help advance medicine can find opportunities in clinical trials as well. In fact, dozens of trials are seeking healthy volunteers, another searchable category on the RecruitMe website.
One recent breakthroughs made from a clinical trial at Columbia involved the study of a drug called tafamidis, which was found to reduce deaths from transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, an underdiagnosed form of heart failure. The drug is now available to patients with this condition.
Columbia’s clinical research studies are open to employees. Many studies offer compensation for study participants. To receive email notifications as clinical trials are posted on RecruitMe, fill out this online form and include your medical interests.