NEW TOOL TO INCREASE USEFULNESS OF CLINICAL TRIALS

NEW TOOL TO INCREASE USEFULNESS OF CLINICAL TRIALS 

NEW TOOL TO INCREASE USEFULNESS OF CLINICAL TRIALS

A huge number of clinical trials are poorly designed and as such the results they produce can be irrelevant to real end users, dddmag.com reports. Now researchers at the University of Aberdeen through collaboration with over 80 international researchers, clinicians and policymakers and leaders in this field have developed a tool which helps trial designers to create more useful trials.

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Clinical trial - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clinical trials are experiments done in clinical research. Such prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants are designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietary choices, dietary supplements, and medical devices) and known interventions that warrant further study and comparison.

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A huge number of clinical trials are poorly designed and as such the results they produce can be irrelevant to real end users, dddmag.com reports.

Now researchers at the University of Aberdeen through collaboration with over 80 international researchers, clinicians and policymakers and leaders in this field have developed a tool which helps trial designers to create more useful trials.

The precis-2 tool is an improved version of a tool devised by members of the same team and already being used by trial designers in the UK and is already being tested by the National Institute of Health in the US.

“Around 25,000 randomised trials are published every year around the world,” explained Professor Shaun Treweek from the University of Aberdeen’s Health Services Research Unit. “They are seen as the ‘gold standard’ test for proving a new drug or treatment is better than the existing one.”

“The problem is that these trials are often fundamentally flawed from the outset because the parameters of the test are often too narrow. In order to make a ‘cleaner’ experiment, trial designers may exclude people with underlying health problems, or the elderly, or carry out all the tests in hospitals, rather than GP practices even though the treatment would be used mainly by GPs, for example.”

“This doesn’t mean the drugs are harmful but it means something that may look extremely effective in a tightly controlled trial might not be nearly as effective in the real world, which is obviously a potential waste of money, time and resources.”

Professor Treweek said the shortcomings of many randomised trials have been recognised by the medical community for 50 years, but the same mistakes are repeated to this day because many of those around the world who design trials have not been properly trained in research methods.