When conducting clinical trials, NIH funding recipients are required to register their study at ClinicalTrials.gov. To make registration easier, a new feature in the eRA Human Subjects System (HSS) allows applicants and recipients to export study record entries as an XML file, and upload fields that are captured in both systems directly into ClinicalTrials.gov’s Protocol Registration and Results System (PRS).
Much has been learned about how sex and race may contribute to differences in health outcomes and physiologic conditions (Clayton, 2014). We know that, for example, a specific drug used to treat insomnia requires different dosing for women and men. African Americans with hypertension are more susceptible to stroke than whites with the same blood pressure levels (Howard, 2013). But in many cases, findings from potentially informative stratified analyses may not be widely available. Less than a third of NIH studies required to analyze sex/gender and race/ethnicity have been found to publish sex-stratified results in peer-reviewed journals (Foulkes, 2011).
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We have been talking a lot recently about NIH’s efforts to improve transparency and trust in NIH funded clinical trials. One important aspect of this effort is improving our ability to identify and describe the clinical trials we are supporting. In fact, a March 2016 GAO report GAO-16-304, entitled Additional Data Would Enhance the Stewardship of Clinical Trials across the Agency, highlighted the fact that “NIH is limited in its ability to make data-driven decisions regarding the use of its roughly $3 billion annual investment in clinical trials.” Many of the other aspects of this initiative, applying clinical trial specific review criteria, improving oversight, and registering and reporting in ClinicalTrials.gov depend upon our basic ability to identify and describe clinical trial applications and awards.
The new PHS Human Subject and Clinical Trial Information form will flag trials, helping us to achieve a number of goals. The form consolidates into a single location information on human subjects that is currently scattered across a number of forms ….
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A few weeks ago we released some case studies and FAQs to help clarify for our research community whether their human subjects research study meets the NIH definition of a clinical trial. These resources prompted a number of follow-on questions and thoughtful suggestions from the community that have helped us refine both the FAQs and the case studies. We are grateful for your thoughtful and constructive comments and suggestions, many of which we have incorporated into our revised documents and communications. ….
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Last September, and in January of this year, we wrote about a suite of initiatives aimed at improving the quality and transparency of the NIH-supported research that most directly engages human participants – clinical trials. These initiatives include dedicated funding opportunity announcements for clinical trials, Good Clinical Practice training, enhanced registration and results reporting on … Continue reading “4 Questions For Researchers and Institutions Involved In Human Subjects Research”
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In September Dr. Carrie Wolinetz and I blogged about our policy reforms to build a more robust clinical trials enterprise through greater stewardship and transparency at each phase of the clinical trial journey from conception to sharing of results. We discussed how these efforts promise to improve the quality and efficiency of clinical trials, translating into more innovative and robust clinical trial design, and accelerated discoveries that will advance human health.
Over the past months we have continued to partner with the community to work through the implementation of these new policies, developing responses to frequently asked questions and even reconsidering the timing of our single IRB policy to give our grantees time to work through how to operationalize the change. ….
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In a separate post today, we provide an overview of the various reforms the NIH is leading to enhance our stewardship of clinical trials. In this post we’d like to focus a bit more on our efforts to broadly disseminate clinical trial availability and results information.
Timely dissemination of clinical trial results information has been a problem, one that has been documented more than once, and that appears to apply to NIH- as well as non-NIH funded trials. To realize the benefits of a clinical trial, the findings must be available to the public as soon as possible after the trial has concluded. This is not only responsible use of taxpayer dollars for publicly funded trials, but also fulfills our responsibility to the individuals who volunteered in these studies with an understanding that their participation would contribute to advancing medical knowledge. Today, NIH announced a new policy that will complement a new federal regulation, referred to here as the Final Rule, also released today, to improve the accessibility of information on clinical trial availability and on the outcomes and results of completed trials.
As you likely know, to carry out the laws passed by Congress, federal agencies issue regulations that govern the activities of the agency and the applicable community. The “Final Rule” announced today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is …
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