SCITRIALS.ORG a new website that launched this fall, is offering people with spinal cord injuries a fast and accurate way to search for clinical trials happening anywhere in the world.
For people looking for spinal cord injury (SCI) trials to participate in, the current offerings online are cumbersome and not specifically geared towards people with SCI.
Users have had to scroll through thousands of studies related to all medical conditions, not limited to SCI, in order to find the trials that were relevant to them. And they would continually have to perform this search, as there was not an email update feature to alert them to when a new study became available that meets their criteria. “SCITRIALS.ORG is making clinical trials easier to access and easier to understand, thus allowing the community to be more involved in the development and execution of research. With the ability to be more engaged and included in clinical trials we believe our community is much better served.” – Barry Munro, Chief Development Officer, CSRO/ASRO
All of these challenges, and more, have been addressed in the newest SCI research trials site called SCITRIALS.ORG, which was created for the spinal cord injury community by the spinal cord injury community to connect the scientific community and people living with SCI.
The trials listed on the site are specific to SCI, they are filtered to contain studies from legitimate universities, research centers, and hospitals and they allow the user to save a search unique to their preferences and then receive email updates when relevant trials in their area come online.
In addition to these existing features, SCITRIALS.ORG is an iterative platform that will evolve based on collective feedback. The feedback may be from those living with SCI seeking clinical trials or from the scientific community looking for research participants to meet their enrollment goals. ”The number of clinical studies and trials targeting SCI has dramatically increased in the past 10-15 years based on our growing knowledge of potential treatment strategies. With that rise comes the problem of finding enough people who can and want to volunteer to participate in trials that may have unknown benefit and risk. Creating a resource that specifically showcases SCI trials and draws in the community living with SCI will be a great asset to researchers by helping them connect with potential participants.” – Kim Anderson, PhD, SCI clinical trial scientist at Case Western Reserve University.
SCITRIALS.ORG is a joint initiative of the North American Spinal Cord Injury Consortium (NASCIC) and endParalysis.org – with development provided by fuelService.org