SHARE- the Scottish Health Research Register is a database of volunteers who are interested in assisting and promoting research for improving health. Anyone who signs up will be contacted and offered opportunities to get involved, and this could be to help with student teaching, help us write guidelines, complete a questionnaire online, design a study or to take part in a clinical investigation for a disease. The choices are very different and there is no obligation to take part in anything. You choose if and when you would like to be involved. In addition to the permission to contact you, we are asking permission to use any left- over blood which remains following a routine clinical test done by your doctors. This is used anonymously for genetic research looking into how medicines work and why they don’t work for everyone.
To register for SHARE today please visit www.registerforshare.org.
SHARE greatly enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of recruitment into health research projects in Scotland. Recruitment is a major concern for all health researchers. Most research projects experience some difficulty with recruitment, leading to delay, increased expense and, in some cases, project failure.
By gaining consent to contact people that have already expressed an interest in clinical research recruitment, retention rates can be enhanced. The direct volunteer contact allowed by SHARE registration means that the assessment feasibility and contact process is both rapid and efficient. Initial studies have suggested that recruitment rates may be as high as 60% from the SHARE register.
SHARE also acts as a powerful bio resource with the collection of over 85,000 left-over human blood samples so far in Scotland for use in research.
To date, the register holds almost 300,000 registrants throughout the entire country and SHARE has already assisted the recruitment for over 80 research studies throughout Scotland.