Before you start
CHORUS is not a service you sign up for. Access comes through an institution that runs it, for a project that has been approved. Here is what has to be in place before you can log in and work.
You need an account on the instance your institution runs, and a project to work in. If you are bringing data, it has to be de-identified and cleared before it goes anywhere near the platform. None of this is instant, so start early.
There is no single CHORUS
CHORUS is software that institutions run for themselves. Each instance is a separate deployment - a hospital, a university, a research consortium - with its own users, its own data, and its own rules about who gets in.
So the first question is not "how do I sign up for CHORUS" but whose instance am I using. The answer determines where you log in, who approves your access, and what is available once you are there.
If you do not know, ask the person leading your project. If you are here for intracerebral EEG research, the answer is probably CHORUS.HIP, which has its own onboarding route.
What you need
An account on that instance. Accounts are granted by the institution running it, not by CHORUS. How you request one varies - some instances use your existing institutional login, others have a separate accreditation step.
A project to work in. Work in CHORUS happens inside a workspace, and a collaborative workspace belongs to a project that has been approved: its purpose, its participants, and the data it may use. Someone has usually done this before you arrive. If not, it is the first thing to sort out.
Data that is ready. If you are bringing data rather than using what is already there, see below - this is the part that catches people out.
How long does this take?
Longer than the technical steps, almost always.
Getting an account is usually quick. Getting a project approved is not: it can involve an ethics committee, a data protection assessment, and an agreement between the institutions involved. Those run on their own timescales, and they are not things the platform can speed up.
The practical advice is to start the approvals early and in parallel, rather than waiting until the analysis is ready to run. People routinely discover the paperwork is the critical path.
If you are bringing data
Two things are true of every dataset before it enters CHORUS, and both are the responsibility of the institution providing it - not the platform.
It must be de-identified first. Direct identifiers are removed at the source institution, before transfer. CHORUS protects data once it is inside; it does not de-identify it for you.
The permissions must exist. Consent covering research use, ethics approval, and whatever agreement governs the transfer between institutions. What exactly is required depends on the data and the project.
Not after upload, and not by the platform. If the recordings still carry direct identifiers, they are not ready to transfer.
What you do not need
Anything installed. CHORUS runs in your browser. No software, no VPN client, no local setup.
A powerful computer. The analysis runs on the platform's compute, not yours. A laptop that can run a browser is enough.
To move the data anywhere. That is the entire point - the tools come to the data, and it stays where it is governed.
What is next
Once you have access, Log in & your dashboard gets you oriented. If you would rather see the whole thing end to end, Run your first analysis walks through it.