Patent ID: 8429547

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprises: retrieving a medical study instrument to use in the medical study, wherein the medical study instrument comprises a plurality of questions related to the medical study; submitting, by one or more computers, the medical study instrument to an online review forum for validation of the medical study instrument; receiving, in response to submission of the medical study to the online review forum, information specifying that the medical study instrument has been validated by the online review forum; identifying, by the one or more computers based on received validation of the medical study instrument, one of more participants invited to join the medical study; sending, by the one or more computers, messages inviting the one or more participants to join the medical study; and in response to acceptance of one of the messages, by a particular participant, of an invitation to join the medical study, presenting the validated medical study instrument to the particular participant, wherein answers to questions in the medical study instrument are associated with score values; retrieving a scoring rule for the medical study instrument, with the scoring rule including a series of instructions for assigning a weighted value to one or more of the score values associated with the questions, and with the weighted value indicating an importance of a question to which the weighted value is assigned relative to other questions in the validated medical study instrument; determining, based on the participant's answers to the questions in the medical study instruments, score values for one or more of the questions; and generating, based on execution of the scoring rule with the determined score values, a score for the medial study instrument.