The Fox Trial Finder is a website which facilitates
Parkinson's disease clinical research by matching
research participants
A research participant, also called a human subject or an experiment, trial, or study participant or subject, is a person who voluntarily participates in human subject research after giving informed consent to be the subject of the research. A rese ...
in the United States to
clinical trials
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human subject research, human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel v ...
.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation hosts the service.
One of the motivations for establishing the platform was a lack of other suitable options for patients to seek and find clinical trials to join.
ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov is a clinical trials registry, registry of clinical trials. It is run by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health, and holds registrations from over 444,000 trials from 221 cou ...
is somewhat of an option as it does provide information on all clinical trials.
In practice, the Michael J. Fox Foundation felt that its research participants needed a similar service but more customized for their needs.
The platform was established in 2012 at a time when such a service was new and other research organizations were establishing similar services. A 2014 paper described the Fox Trial Finder as being part of a broader trend for researchers to support patient communities in organizing themselves to participate in trials.
The Michael J. Fox foundation does a range of other social experiments and interventions which interrelate to the platform and have the overall intent to make for better engagement between clinical trials and research participants. The platform has experimented with conducting research participant study visits through remote video chat. In coordination with the platform, the platform has connected research participants with transportation to study sites.
A 2015 evaluation found that the Fox Trial Finder was able to operate as intended and actually match research participants to trials.
References
External links
*{{official website, https://www.michaeljfox.org/trial-finder
Parkinson's disease
Clinical trial organizations
Michael J. Fox