Velocity Clinical Research

Want to earn hundreds — and potentially thousands — of dollars to test vaccines, medical devices and other health treatments? That’s the deal you get when you agree to “volunteer” for clinical studies through a site called Velocity Clinical Research.

The catch is that you’re sometimes testing drugs and treatments that could make you sick.

But, let’s start at the beginning.

What is Velocity Clinical Research?

Velocity is a biomedical research firm that studies drugs, treatments, vaccines, and medical devices for a wide array of pharmaceutical companies and medical research organizations. It enlists consumers to test these devices, generally paying a per-visit stipend for the volunteer’s time and expenses.

How it works

If you want to sign up to participate in clinical trials, you’ll need to download the site’s smart phone app, called Vision Engage. Once downloaded, you’ll answer several questions about your age, health and preferred trial location. The app will then let you know whether you currently qualify for a clinical trial.

If you don’t currently qualify, you may later. The site will contact you when it has a trial that fits your profile.

And when you’re offered a study, a Velocity representative will tell you where the study is being conducted, what’s required, how much it pays, and any known risks. You decide whether to participate.

Velocity Clinical Research review

A scan of a dozen Velocity locations indicate that participants are typically compensated between $75 and $350 per office visit. However, the site does not disclose the compensation for the vast majority of its studies. Instead, it only gives potential participants this information, when they’re contacted by phone.

By and large, however, studies that require healthy adults are paid. The compensation for studies that are only open to someone with a disease may be paid in the form of free treatment.

What you’ll do

Clinical trials are all about testing the effectiveness and safety of new drugs and treatments. So, when you volunteer for clinical trials, you’re signing up for a lot of medical testing — blood tests, heart and blood-pressure monitoring, urinalysis. The monitoring generally doesn’t require much physical activity, but you have to be comfortable with a lot of medical poking and prodding.

You should also know that every new drug has some risk. Thus, there’s at least a slight chance that whatever treatment you’re testing could make you sick.

By the time drugs and treatments make it to the human trial stage, the nature of the risks are usually at least partially understood. And Velocity medical personnel will explain these risks to you. Be sure to pay close attention and watch for any averse health affects. Not only does the research firm need to know about these, you need to be an advocate for your own health and safety with medical research side gigs.

If you think, at any point, that the research is threatening your health, you have the absolute right to drop out. And Velocity will pay you for the portion of the study you completed. Naturally, you can earn more if you participate to the end. But only do that if you feel comfortable with the way it’s going.

The good things about Velocity

Unlike many other research firms, Velocity has a wide geographic reach. The site brags that it more than 60 locations in the U.S. and 17 in Europe. (Comparatively, Altasciences has only 9 study locations.) So, if you’re anywhere near a big city, you may have several convenient locations to choose from. Each location also has access to different types of studies, so your chance of being able to participate in paid research here is pretty good.

The site also gets rave reviews from most former study participants. Thousands of consumer reviews on both Google Play and the Apple App store give Velocity an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars — a remarkably high rating for this type of side hustle. Reviewers say that the company’s staff are professional, courteous and concerned about the patient experience.

The site’s staff also is good about explaining the risks of any individual study, what’s involved and how participants will be compensated. Generally speaking, compensation is paid quickly and without fail.

The bad news

However, largely because of the number of locations and that they don’t all do the same types of studies, finding a study that you might qualify for can be ponderous That’s because studies are listed on the app by location, not by type. And, because the site has so many locations, multiple locations may be equally convenient for you. If you check just one, you may miss out.

There is no central location for all of the studies available in, say, Southern California. So, if you’re in the Los Angeles area, for instance, there are three locations that are within 30 miles of each other. But you’ll have to check each location’s available studies separately.

The site is also cagey about how much you might earn with any given study. While a few studies specify the payment you’d earn for each office visit, the website and app do not explain how long each of these visits might take nor how many of them would be required to complete the research.

For instance, a Covid booster study in Van Nuys simply says that “compensation may be provided.” You only get information about what’s entailed and what you’re paid, if you apply and are contacted. In this case, the study pays $120 per office visit and there are 7 visits total, for total pay of $840.

However, the first office visit is likely to require three hours and the others about an hour each — not counting the time it takes to get there. To be sure, that still works out to pay of roughly $90 an hour. But similar clinical testing sites are more straightforward about the pay — and often pay considerably more.

Competition

For example, if you want to check whether there’s a clinical trial available with Altasciences, you can view all 20 of the site’s current Southern California trials in a glance by simply clicking on “current studies.” Of these, the most lucrative study offered $17,350 for a 4-night overnight stay, plus 14 follow-up visits, a screening and a phone call. That works out to average pay of nearly $900 a day.

Recommendations

If you’re interested in clinical trials, you are likely to be well treated and paid at a nice hourly rate with Velocity. (You can sign up with Velocity here.) But, if you’re going for the big money, Altasciences is a better bet if you happen to be near one of the site’s 9 U.S. locations. You can learn more about Altasciences here.

Other clinical research sites recommended by SideHusl.com: Fortrea and Parexel. Notably, all of these sites offer highly lucrative opportunities. But be sure to understand the risks.

And know that if you ever feel that your health is being compromised, you have the right to leave the trial at any time. These sites will pay you for the amount of time/visits that you completed.

What their users say (from Google Play)

I’m participating in a clinical trial to help determine if a certain new medication is safe for others. It’s really simple. You get paid to go in a few times a year and your have to send in a weekly report through your phone. That only takes 2 minutes! So why not help out ?

They were courteous quick and professional .

The staff is very friendly and helpful. And if you don’t qualify for the study, they sit down with you and explain why which is very helpful. And then they try to set you up with a program that you qualify for

Great place nice people and good money for doing something that helps

Great people that work there they listen and when your doing a study they make sure you know everything before you start. They are very thorough in explaining how the program works

From Apple’s App Store

Everyone is very nice and friendly at Velocity Clinical Research. They all are very respectful of me as a patient & study’s participant, show a real interest in my and my wellbeing.

I especially like the way Dr. Overcash took plenty of time at my screening visit to get to know me, and learn about my medical history (which is somewhat complex). At my next visit he brought to my attention a lab value that didn’t disqualify me from the study, but he wanted me to know about it to be able to follow up with my own physician. Whenever I have met with him, he has always shown that he genuinely cares about me, my health and whether I am having any problems or new symptoms from the study vaccine. I actually look forward to my clinic visits!

Everyone at the facility was professional and kind. I felt safe in capable hands. I appreciated all the help having transportation to velocity studies and to get back home. Thank you to all your employees and the Doctor was also very good. Sincerely, Carolyn Williams

Get paid to help others

I get paid as scheduled for every appointment. So that’s great. But I get multiple notifications per day requesting that I leave feedback on a recent appointment. And if I tap on it, there is nowhere to leave a review. It is starting to be very annoying to get all of these notifications for nothing. I don’t want to turn off notifications because I might miss something important. But it really makes me want to drop out of the study.

This was my second time participating and I highly recommend that others do the same. It is a truly easy way to help the advancement of medicine, give the bird to vaccine deniers and even get a little spending money to boot. It makes this senior citizen feel good inside too. And the staff could not be nicer.

Everyone was very kind, courteous and professional. The time was longer than expected. I don’t remember that being told to me before hand. But I may just not have remembered. I have done studies in the past and will continue to do them as long as I qualify.