clinical trial registration
How Can You Take Part in Clinical Research? Looking Beyond “First in Human”
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
For a remarkable journey through the front lines of clinical research, I’d like to invite you to join me in viewing First in Human, which premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET on the Discovery Channel. This three-part docuseries, to be aired August 10, 17, and 24, provides an unprecedented look inside the NIH Clinical Center here in Bethesda, MD, following four of the many brave patients who’ve volunteered to take part in the clinical trials that are so essential to medical breakthroughs.
You’ll learn about what it’s like to take part in an experimental trial of a new treatment, when all standard options have failed. You’ll see that the NIH Clinical Center and its staff are simply amazing. But keep in mind that you don’t have to travel all the way to Bethesda to be part of outstanding, NIH-funded clinical research. In fact, we support clinical trials all across the country, and it’s often possible to find one at a medical institution near your home. To search for a clinical trial that might be right for you or a loved one with a serious medical problem, try going to ClinicalTrials.gov, a web site run by NIH.
Clinical Trials: Sharing of Data and Living Up to Our End of the Bargain
Posted on by Drs. Kathy L. Hudson and Francis S. Collins
Thinkstock
Today we took a huge step forward in our efforts to make sure that data from biomedical research is shared widely and rapidly. The NIH, in collaboration with our fine colleagues at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and with the valuable input from scientists, patients and other members of the public, has announced the HHS regulation and NIH policy to ensure that information about clinical trials is widely shared. In this blog I want to talk about what this will mean for patients, providers, and researchers. I also want to reflect a bit on how the new regulation and policy fit into our overall efforts to improve clinical trials and data sharing.
Clinical trials are essential for the translation of research advances to new approaches to prevention and treatment. Volunteers who take part in clinical trials often do so with no assurance of personal benefit, but with the expectation that their involvement will add to the growing body of knowledge about health and disease, and thus may help others someday. For that to be realized, all trial results information needs to be publicly reported in a timely fashion—and yet we know that doesn’t always happen. Today’s announcements aim to change that. The HHS regulation issued today, called a “final rule”, describes requirements for registering certain clinical trials and submitting summary results information from these trials to ClinicalTrials.gov, a database managed by NIH’s National Library of Medicine (NLM).
