Crowdsourcing for health: scientists and patients reconfiguring trials and regulatory practices

Crowdsourcing is reshaping key gatekeeping mechanisms in healthcare such as regulatory tests and clinical trials. Digital technology means that information and knowledge can be shared more broadly within communities of scientists and patients, yet it also means that established quality filters may be bypassed. 

By comparing pilot studies of science communities crowdsourcing information for regulatory tests to patient-led clinical trials, this study aims to understand how digital technologies incorporate and transform various concerns of scientist and patient communities, and how equitable, safe and sustainable crowdsourcing practices can be promoted. 

The project focuses on the inter-relationship between epistemic, social, pragmatic and ethical drivers in the distribution and assessment of information, the integrity of research, and the social acceptance of new modes of knowledge gatekeeping by scientists and patients.