NHS COVID-19 vaccine research registry
Date: 29 July 2020
The NHS COVID-19 Vaccine research registry will help people across the UK sign up for information on the new COVID-19 vaccine studies.
The registry has been developed as part of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce, in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), NHS Digital, and the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Governments. We are also collaborating with ZOE, the company behind the Covid-19 symptom study who have 3.5 million UK users of their app, to work together to enrol their volunteers onto vaccine trials. It will help large numbers of peoplebe recruited into the studies over the coming months, potentially leading to an effective vaccine being identified and made available to the UK public against coronavirus earlier.
How does it work?
There are a number of vaccines being identified and safety-tested at the moment, but only large scale studies can give scientists the information needed about how effective they are. Working with the NHS, NIHR aims to recruit over half a million people onto the registry, which will allow people to be put in touch with the vaccine trials in the coming months. Researchers are looking for people from all backgrounds, ages and parts of the UK, including both people with or without existing health conditions, to take part in vaccine studies, to make sure that any vaccines developed will work for everyone.
The service is available to anyone aged 18 or over, living in the UK. To register, users need to fill in some personal and contact details, and answer a series of basic health screening questions on an NHS.UK website form. The service is highly secure, with personal data and permissions held in a NHS system managed by NHS Digital.
By registering through the service, users are not signing up to take part in a specific trial or study. Instead, researchers working on vaccine studies supported by the NIHR will be able to search for volunteers who have signed up to the service.
When a suitable volunteer has been identified, the researchers will send an email or text to anyone who matches the criteria for their study. This will provide more information about the study – and offer you the opportunity to contact the research team and find out more, or express an interest to take part.
There is no obligation to take part in any study and users can change their mind and remove their contact details from the registry at any time.
Find out more about vaccine studies on Be Part of Research