Privacy Policy

LocalTrial (“we”, “us”) helps people find clinical studies near them and helps research sites hear from people interested in their studies. LocalTrial is operated by AVAIA, LLC. Questions about this policy go to privacy@avaia.net.

We serve people in the United States, and our services are run from the United States.

This policy covers two kinds of people:

• Volunteers: people who look for studies, sign up to be matched, or apply to a study.
• Research sites: the staff of the organizations that list studies with us.

• Your mobile phone number. You confirm it with a code we text you, and it is how you sign in.
• What you tell us about yourself: your name, email (optional), date of birth or age, biological sex, preferred language and ZIP code.
• If you sign up to be matched, and only after you agree to it: the conditions you're interested in, whether you'd take part as a healthy volunteer, how far you'd travel, and your preferences, such as placebo or pay. If you sign up for someone you care for, these are about them.
• When you apply to a study: the study, the location you chose, your contact details, and your answers to that study's pre-screening questions.
• What you do in your account: studies you save or hide, and sites you follow.
• If you tap “Use my location”: your device's location, rounded on your device and turned at once into the nearest ZIP code. We don't keep the location itself.

• To suggest studies that may fit you. Suggestions are worked out from your own answers each time you look.
• To send your application to the one research site running the study you applied to.
• To confirm your application and send you the link to the study's questions.
• To sign you in and keep your account secure.
• To fill in forms for you next time, so you don't type the same details twice.

We never sell your information, and never use it for advertising.

No research site sees your profile. When you apply to a study, the site running it sees your contact details, the location you chose, and your answers, for that study only. Other sites never see that you applied. The studies you saved, hid or followed are never shown to any site.

Once a site has your application, it may contact you about that study, and it handles your information under its own policies, including any medical privacy rules that apply to it.

We also use service providers that handle information only to run LocalTrial for us, under contracts that limit them to that and require them to protect it:

• Cloud hosting, where LocalTrial runs, stores its data and checks sign-in codes.
• Text message delivery.
• Email delivery. Our emails to volunteers don't name the study or the site.
• Payment processing, for research sites. Volunteers never pay us.

We use AI tools to rewrite public study information from ClinicalTrials.gov in plain language and to draft pre-screening questions for sites. Only that public study text is sent; no information about you ever is.

Your ZIP code is placed on the map from a public file we keep ourselves. It is never sent to a map or location service.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it.

Texts from LocalTrial are sent by AVAIA, LLC. We text you the code that confirms your number, a confirmation when you apply to a study, with a link to its questions, and, only if you choose to, alerts about new studies that may fit you. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply.

Reply STOP to any of our texts to stop them, and HELP for help. STOP ends texts from LocalTrial; a research site you applied to may still contact you about that study from its own phone.

We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes. The only parties that receive your number are our service providers, to send sign-in codes and deliver our texts, and the research site you apply to, for that study.

For staff of research sites we collect the name, email address and profile picture of the Google account you sign in with, your role and settings, and a record of what you do in the console, which we keep for security and audit. For the site we keep its details, its locations and studies, and its billing: balance, invoices and payments. Card details are taken and kept by our payment processor; we see only the card's brand and last four digits.

We use your browser's storage to keep you signed in and to remember small things, such as where to return after signing in. We don't use advertising cookies. On our general pages only (the home page, how it works, why take part, questions, for research sites, and this policy and our terms) we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read, with its cookies. It is never on a study's page, a site's or location's list of studies, the questions we ask to match you, sign-in, or anything you see once signed in, so it never learns which studies or conditions you look at. We don't send it your name, number or any id of yours, and we've turned off Google's advertising features for it. To protect sign-in from abuse, Google reCAPTCHA checks that requests come from our site, under Google's privacy policy.

If you start applying but never confirm your phone number, the application is deleted after 30 days unless the site has already followed up. Otherwise we keep your information while your account is open, or as long as a research site needs your application for its study and the law requires.

• You can see and change your details and preferences at any time from your profile once you've signed in.
• You can stop texts by replying STOP.
• To see a copy of your information, or to have your account and information deleted, email privacy@avaia.net from the email on your account, or tell us the phone number you sign in with. We will confirm it's you before acting. A site that already received your application keeps its own copy, and we will tell you how to reach it.

Depending on where you live, you may have other rights under your state's law. Ask us and we will help.

Your information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Only you can read your profile; a site's staff sign in with Google and see only their own site's applications, and staff sessions end after a short time. No system is perfectly secure, and we will tell you if a breach affects your information as the law requires.

LocalTrial is for adults: you must be 18 or older to use it yourself. A parent or legal guardian may use it for someone under 18 in their care, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 who uses it on their own. A parent or caregiver can sign up for someone they care for, and is responsible for having the right to share that person's information.

When we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and tell you before a change that affects how we use information you already gave us.