Intention of use of the patient-centric research engagement portal (PREP)

Patients are keen to participate in health research in this era of participatory health, but they cannot easily obtain information about research; meanwhile, researchers are facing challenges when recruiting participants for their research because their messages cannot reach patients efficiently. To mitigate both issues, we explore the use of a patient-centric research engagement portal (PREP), which is a unified system to disseminate information about research studies and to collect registrations for the participation of research projects. In this paper, we particularly investigate the intention of use of PREPs by conducting focus groups and semi-structured interviews. As a part of our analysis, we propose a model to describe the patient-related and the owner-related factors that affect the intention of use. Finally, we conclude with several design implications for information systems to recruit and engage with research participants.