About Healthy / Control Volunteers
In clinical research many volunteers provide researchers with important information for comparison with people who have specific illnesses. You can be a healthy or control volunteer even if you have a specific condition. It depends on the type of person a researcher is looking for. On this page we provide you with the opportunity to take part in some interesting research studies that can be about testing new medicines or health interventions, looking at the underlying causes of disease or trying to answer basic scientific questions. Some of these studies may ask you to provide samples or to take tests where results can be compared to people with a certain condition.
Researchers may ask you a series of questions to see if you can help them with their study. It is important that you answer them honestly. The citizen scientist site will provide you with lots of opportunities to get involved so if you are not selected for one study, there will be others that you could take part in.
What types of studies need healthy volunteers?
The answer to that is lots of different types of studies.
You could be asked to provide a DNA sample to compare the DNA of a healthy person to that of someone with an illness. This helps to find out what causes a disease.
You might want to volunteer to take part in a clinical trial testing new interventions such as new medicines which could help bring better medicines to the market faster.
You might want to try out a new technology and report back on how useful it was. This will help researchers to see how best to use it if at all.
Some people are happy to fill out surveys and questionnaires to help improve knowledge and understanding of a condition or to help improve services.
The opportunities for volunteers are endless.
