TOPS: an internet-based system to prevent healthy subjects from over-volunteering for clinical trials

AIM: Our aim was to set up a system to help UK clinical research units to prevent healthy volunteers from participating in more than one non-therapeutic trial simultaneously, or from starting a second trial too soon after the first. METHODS: TOPS (The Over-volunteering Prevention System) is internet-based, simple and quick to use, free to users and a charity run by a Board of Trustees. Users enter only two or three pieces of information: (1) ‘National Insurance number’ (NINO) of UK citizens, or ‘passport number’ and country of origin of non-UK citizens, as their identifier, (2) ‘date of last dose’ of trial medicine or (3) ‘never dosed’. Subjects must consent, but TOPS collects only non-personal data, so it does not require Ethics Committee approval and is not covered by the Data Protection Act. RESULTS: A total of 55 research units (29 clinical research organisations, 5 pharmaceutical companies, 13 universities and 8 hospitals) throughout the UK have registered to use TOPS, and have entered 124,906 volunteers since we launched it. All commercial and many non-commercial units now use TOPS. In our unit, no subject has to the best of our knowledge participated in two trials simultaneously. TOPS has reduced to <1% the incidence of subjects attempting to volunteer within 3 months of completing another trial elsewhere, and very few have to our knowledge succeeded. CONCLUSION: TOPS is widely used and effective, and helps research units to comply with UK clinical trial regulations.