Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s mission is to offer each patient the best chance at his or her best outcome by providing the highest-quality clinical care, translational research, scientific discovery and education.

Our vision is to be the global source of science-driven breakthroughs in Human Ability™. By fully integrating our mission and vision, we are able to apply research in clinical practice. We are the first and only research rehabilitation hospital to practice “translational” medicine, translating scientific discovery into patient care, continuously.

Essential to our mission and vision is Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Nonpatient Research Registry. The Nonpatient Research Registry is a rich data base of willing research participants who are without significant health problems. This subset of the registry serves as a pool for study control groups. Researchers compare control-group results with those of the population under study whose members share a specific diagnosis or condition. The differences between the groups is a rich source of new knowledge in the search for new treatments, or cures. Typically, control-group volunteers are matched with patient-group volunteers who share certain demographic characteristics, such as age or gender.

Joining the Nonpatient Research Registry is easy. Volunteers enroll themselves, a process that only takes about 10 minutes. We ask volunteers to provide some basic information and give us permission or consent to share that information with other Shirley Ryan AbilityLab research teams.

NOTE: All information submitted is confidential and can only be accessed by authorized members of our research teams. Thus, there is only minimal loss of confidentiality. If you are matched with a study’s requirements, a member of the study team will contact you.

Should you be contacted, choosing to participate in any study is a personal decision. You may choose not to participate in that study, but still remain in the registry. Also, if at any time you change your mind and wish to withdraw from our registry, you would just email costrowski@sralab.org, and your information will be removed. If you choose not to participate in our research registry, or choose to participate and later change your mind, you will not be penalized in any way or lose any benefits to which you are entitled, specifically any present or future medical care.

By submitting information through our website, you agree and confirm that you are 18 years of age or older and submitting information only about yourself. Use the QR code or click below to sign up.