What is a remote clinical trial?
A remote (or decentralized) clinical trial is a research study that runs without requiring participants to physically visit a clinic, hospital, or research site. Visits happen over video. Surveys arrive by app. Wearables, blood-draw kits, and study medication ship to your door.
Sponsors — pharma companies, academic researchers, biotech startups — love the model because it reaches a wider, more representative population than a single research site ever could. Participants love it because it fits around their life instead of the other way around.
Most remote studies pay. Compensation ranges from a small honorarium for a 30-minute survey to several thousand dollars for a multi-month device or medication trial. RemoteOnly.us indexes the ones that pay and verifies the ones that are genuinely remote-only.
Frequently asked questions
How does compensation work?
Studies pay per visit, per completed survey, per device-wear day, or as a single completion bonus. Payment usually arrives by ACH, prepaid debit card, or PayPal — specifics vary by sponsor. Every listing on RemoteOnly.us shows the published compensation up front so you can decide before applying.
Am I eligible?
Each study has its own eligibility criteria: age range, medical history, current medications, location, device requirements (smartphone OS, internet speed). Most listings here will run a 2-minute pre-screen before connecting you to the sponsor’s formal screening process.
Is it safe?
Trials listed here are registered with regulators (FDA in the US, plus institutional IRB review). Remote does not mean unsupervised — you’ll have a study coordinator, a physician you can reach, and clear stop criteria. We never list trials that haven’t cleared IRB review.
What’s the time commitment?
Anything from a one-off 20-minute survey to a 12-month device study. Listings are tagged by total time commitment so you can filter for what fits.
Who runs these trials?
Pharmaceutical companies, biotech startups, academic medical centers, and dedicated decentralized-trial operators (CROs that specialize in remote conduct). Every listing names the sponsor and the principal investigator.
How is my data protected?
Sponsors are bound by HIPAA (in the US) and by the terms of the IRB-approved protocol. Your identifying information is held by the sponsor, not by RemoteOnly.us — we link you to the study and step out of the way.
Is RemoteOnly.us itself a research site?
No. We’re a directory. We don’t recruit, we don’t pay you, and we don’t hold your medical records. We point you to studies that meet our remote-only and pays-participants criteria, and you take it from there with the sponsor.
Stay in the loop
We’re launching with a curated list of the first hundred remote-only studies. Bookmark this page or check back — the directory goes live soon.
Looking for paid clinical trials in your city right now? Browse hipa.ai/paid-clinical-trials — our sister directory covers in-person and hybrid studies across the US.