ASDO Researches

When thinking about the difficult economic situation that education and science in Brazil is going through, with drastic cuts in research funding, ASDO proposes a technological solution to facilitate and reduce costs for conducting scientific research on human beings.  

ASDO will act as facilitator for the application of research on human beings, functioning as a communication platform between researchers and volunteers.

There will be two types of research available: “single research”, and “continuous research”.

Volunteers can participate in four different ways: 
- by questionnaire: the volunteer will answer an online questionnaire; 
- by phone call: the researcher will call and interview the volunteer;
- by sending documents: the volunteer will send documents through files; 
- face-to-face: the volunteer will be invited to go to the researcher's institution to participate in a research. 

The results will help in the development of health area. 

For a research to be applied in Brazil, the approval of a "Research Ethics Committee" is required, and research participants can only be volunteers. This is determined by the laws of the country (Resolution No. 466/2012 and Resolution No. 510/2016 of the National Health Council).  

Currently, in Brazil, there are about 760,000 researchers working with human beings.  

The number of researches approved by the Committees has been increasing each year. In 2019, about 40,000 researches with human beings were approved by the 846 Research Ethics Committees existing in Brazil.  

The problem is: that researchers need to move around the city to find volunteers and, therefore, waste a lot of time and money to find these. 

The specific issue with this challenge is: it can take a long time to track the spread of an emerging outbreak by using the traditional method of conducting research and communicating with research participants. This can lead to the spread of an infectious disease worldwide. The results of a research, when achieved quickly, can provide data to improve decision-making for emergency resolution.  

To facilitate communication with volunteers and conducting research, ASDO intends to bring together all researchers and volunteers on one platform. 

The volunteers will provide their sociodemographic, socioeconomic data as well as some health status data. All the answers from registered volunteers will be compiled and made generally available.  

REGARDING ASDO DATABASE: 
a) Analyze the characteristics of the population registered on ASDO; 
b) Display in graphs the data of the characteristics of the population registered on ASDO; 
c) Link a research with the specific volunteer, sending notifications to the volunteers about the researches being carried out in their region or with the inclusion criteria according to their profile. 

REGARDING RESEARCH: 
a) Show the research to the general population; to possible specific volunteers from the research; and show the research in more detail to others researchers; 
b) Pre-select volunteers from the ASDO database; from a specific questionnaire; from the results of another research;  
c) Randomize volunteers;  
d) Divide volunteers into groups;  
e) Schedule the participation of volunteers in a research;  
f) Conduct some specific researches; 
g) Share the results of a research among researchers;  
h) Training of researchers;  
i) Store results of some researches;  
j) Apply special researches quickly, in case of emergency situations.  

(The identification data from volunteers will be replaced by a numeric code, to ensure the volunteer's anonymity)

Most researches in Brazil are carried out at universities in the country. Thus, ASDO aims to reach professors and students at universities. This is a community that can carry out scientific research and also tends to volunteer for it, because it is aware of the importance of participation. Therefore, we can consider the following numbers for potential customers:  

a) The census of higher education reported that in 2018 there were more than 8 million undergraduate students in Brazil and more than 350,000 professors.  
b) In 2018, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) provided almost 100,000 scholarships for postgraduate studies.  

Benefits:  
a) Optimize time and reduce financial costs to find volunteers and conduct scientific research on human beings;  
b) Facilitate and quickly speed up the collection of population data, in cases of emergency situations;  
c) The results of scientific research will be more reliable;  
d) The results of scientific research will be stored more safely;  
e) The private data of volunteers will be more confidential. 

The results of the research carried out will contribute to the development and evolution of social and health areas, improving the quality of life for millions of people. 

ASDO intends to conduct researches via online questionnaire with the aim of knowing what is happening to the population in emergency situations (for example: pandemic). This research will be designed to anticipate a possible new pandemic and will be approved by an Ethics Committee to be applied quickly, if necessary. Thus, this research will aim to track the spread of an emerging outbreak and the analysis of the resulting data will help design strategies to solve the emergency. 

ASDO will ensure that all research is in accordance with the Brazilian Research Ethical Resolutions.

In Brazil, ASDO's functions will focus on scientific research on human beings, guaranteeing research ethics established by the resolutions of the National Health Council of Brazil (Resolution No. 466/12 and Resolution No. 510/16). There is a possibility of ASDO to advance to a global scale. 

Anyone with Internet access can volunteer on the ASDO platform.  

ASDO will create a new methodology for the application of researches on human beings and help to find volunteers for scientific researches. 

In addition, ASDO will establish a standard for classifying the population's social, economic and health data. This will make it easier to compare the different communities covered in different scientific articles. 

ASDO will also provide, by means of its ASDO database, statistical data to the people and government agencies about the general characteristics of the population, allowing a better knowledge of the population, so that proposals for social and health improvements can arise. 

ASDO will contribute to the popularization of scientific articles, since the volunteers may have access to the scientific articles of the research they participated in. 

ASDO's virtual platform will use "software and mobile application" technologies. 

It will be necessary to use "Big Data" technologies to analyze a large number of volunteer registrations from the ASDO database and to link the researches to their specific volunteers. 

ASDO has the possibility of adapting the services offered specifically to researchers or to common users of the platform. 

For researchers, there will be the possibility of conducting their research for free on the platform. However, in these cases, the profitability of ASDO will be through advertising.  
The researchers will have to pay a fee for the following services: 
- Removing advertisements for easier access of volunteers to researches; 
- Sending notifications to potential specific volunteers who have been found on the ASDO Database; 
- Sending notifications to specific volunteers based on results of other researches or on pre-selection (only if authorized by the researcher responsible for the original research); 
- Randomizing volunteers; 
- Dividing volunteers into groups; 
- Sending a “participation reminder” notification to volunteers who are scheduled to participate in a research; 
- Conducting a large research with several objectives and researchers; 
- Exclusive access to the details of a research; 
- Sending the results of a research to a researcher who is not involved in the research (only if authorized by the researcher responsible for the original research); 
- Removing advertisements for researchers who access training (during the training of researchers, there will be ads before they access the training). 

For the common user, ASDO intends to produce content with the information of various researches. The user will only have free access to part of the content, the rest will only be accessible for those who pay for a subscription plan. 

ASDO will produce benefits through advertising, selling services and raising investment capital.  

Participating in Mit Solve represents that ASDO really has the possibility to impact lives. It will be possible to leave the concept stage and scale up ASDO more safely. 

MIT Solve will create the necessary partnerships to accelerate the work, validate the impact and the business model and scale the solution. 

ASDO will receive strategic guidance and advice; access to prize funding; access to networking at International Conferences on Social Impact; guidance on improving the “pitch” and media presentation... 

ASDO seeks MIT faculty partners or initiatives to: 

- prepare the questionnaire for Registration of Volunteers on ASDO; 
- prepare the questionnaire for Registration of Researchers on ASDO; 
- prepare the ASDO Emergency Research Questionnaires; 
- prepare the ASDO Themes for searching research on the platform; 
- prepare the Rules and Conditions for Submitting a Research on ASDO; 
- prepare the ASDO Volunteer Randomization System; 
- develop the software and application. 

ASDO is a transformational and innovative idea, it has the potential to help thousands of researchers in Brazil and it can be scaled on a global level. 

Providing the popularization of scientific articles may mean that proposals for improvements in social and health areas could come from anywhere and from anyone. 

ASDO will use strong data science to develop the platform.  

It will be necessary to use Big Data technologies to analyze a large number of volunteer registrations from the ASDO database and link researches to their specific volunteers. 

ASDO will facilitate research in social areas, such as research on the causes of gender inequalities or gender-based violence. 

ASDO will facilitate research in social areas, such as research on the difficulties that refugees face. 

With the help of the ASDO database and research related to the health area, new strategies may arise to improve health and well-being. 

ASDO will facilitate research in social areas, such as research on the causes of gender inequalities. 

During the registration of volunteers, ASDO will ask if the person has already lived on the street or if he/she has already spent time in prison. These people will represent who is currently in this situation. Thus, researches can be carried out to look for the causes of these situations and ideas may emerge in the future to reduce these situations of inequality. 

ASDO intends to comply with the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, including scientific methods, professional ethics and standard procedures for the collection, processing, storage and presentation of statistical data for the volunteer register on the platform.