Case Study: National Institute for Health Research accelerates dementia volunteer matching with PA Consulting

Taking a critical step towards a cure for dementia

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), working with its partners Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, needed a way to connect interested volunteers with dementia research groups through a public-facing digital service. PA Consulting was brought in to help create Join Dementia Research, a portal designed to support this matching process and provide a better user experience for multiple stakeholder groups.

PA Consulting delivered the portal in just 16 weeks using agile delivery, fortnightly sprints, and regular feedback from research groups and volunteers. The solution was built on cloud technologies to support a dispersed network of research organisations, keep running costs low, and allow future scaling. The impact was strong: within a month of launch, over 5,000 volunteers had registered and more than 80 research organisations were using the site to connect with over 6,000 volunteers.

National Institute for Health Research

Peter Knight

Deputy Director at the Department of Health for Research Contracting Information Intelligence and Stakeholder Engagement