Abstract: The present application is directed to methods and systems for tapping online resources to design a clinical trial and/or recruit participants for the clinical trial. In one embodiment, a system for using online resources to design a clinical trial and/or recruit participants includes one or more web crawlers. Each of the web crawler may be configured to collect data related to one or more specified topics during a community identification phase. A data engine of the system processes the collected data into filtered, relevant information that identifies communities of individuals suitable for recruitment. A patient discovery module may, in a patient discovery phase, develop or use a survey to further target interested patients for recruitment and collect information for designing a suitable study or trial. The system may, in an assessment and communication phase, design a study which may be self-managed by the recruited patients.