Informative trials

Clinical trials underpin healthcare decisions made around the world. However, many trials proceed with design flaws that are not flagged early enough for corrections to be made. Current review mechanisms may lack pre-funding peer review steps that will identify problematic trials. Consequently, a large proportion of trials (some estimates start around 60%) go ahead but generate poor quality evidence, negatively impacting the informativeness of the trial to patients, clinicians, researchers and policy makers. Uninformative trials (Zarin et al., 2019) fail to improve patient care and health and are a source of research waste (Altman, 1994).

The INFORM project meets this challenge by identifying tangible ways to foster trial informativeness by modify pre-funding peer review.

INFORM Research

Firstly, three complementary research strands identified best practice actions and processes that drive clinical trial informativeness:

• A rapid review of global insights (Prowse, et al., 2025)
• A content analysis of international guidance documents (Prowse et al., 2026)
• Interviews with diverse stakeholders involved with clinical trials (Pre-print Prowse et al., 2025)

Secondly, we mapped the findings from the three research strands to draw out prominent converging actions 

• The 12 Good Practice Actions – short communication (Prowse et al. 2026).
• What global best practices can be identified and adopted to enhance the informativeness of clinical trials: a mapping exercise (Prowse et al, 2026, in preparation). 

The full list of INFORM publications is available here.

INFORM Training

We have developed training modules to explain how any funder can engage with the INFORM 12 Good Practice Actions.

A full set of training materials – Learning about the 12 Good Practice Actions – is available free of charge.  For each of the 12 actions this training:

• summarises the action
• includes a video where an expert discusses the importance of the action
• explains what trials teams and others should do to implement the action
• highlights what funders in particular should do to implement the action

The training materials also have a set of supporting resources, including the INFORM Structured Grant Form for Trials, a primary INFORM output that collates our findings into a single tool.

INFORM Funder Case Studies

During INFORM we have worked with two funders: the UK’s Wellcome Mental Health and Ireland’s Health Research Board (HRB). We have discussed INFORM and its findings and how with Wellcome and HRB could be modify their funding process and materials to take account of what we found.

Our initial aims were to discuss hypothetical changes. However, both funders were interested in making real changes to upcoming funding calls. This has made the discussions much more useful for both INFORM and the funder, but has required us to take extra care, and have wider discussion, as we are no longer contemplating potential change but actual change.  

These discussions are ongoing and at present we cannot publicly share the results because changes need to be discussed and signed off, and that takes time.  However, both funders are discussing using all or part of the INFORM Structured Grant Form for Trials, with modification. 

Once Wellcome and HRB have signed off on changes, and are happy to release material publicly, we will present two case studies of how changes were discussed and implemented for these two funders.  We may not, however, be able to make all of our materials public, depending on funder requirements.

Regardless, once available the case studies will describe how the funder was able to work with the INFORM findings to make it more likely that the trials they fund are informative.  

The INFORM Project Team

The INFORM project is led by Prof Shaun Treweek in the Aberdeen Centre for Evaluation at the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. Other members of the INFORM team are Dr Jude Bain, Prof Miriam Brazzelli, Dr Hanne Bruhn and Dr Sarah Prowse.

Dr Heidi Green was a key collaborator who did our interview analysis, as well as producing the video collection in our training materials.  Dr Azar Alexander-Sefre provided additional materials for the website, and checked our website resources for consistency with the INFORM research publications. We got extremely helpful advice and guidance from Prof Declan Devane and Prof Mike Clarke throughout the project.

Finally, we would like to thank all of the contributors who gave their valuable input for the interviews, and all those who provided a video as a part of the INFORM training materials.

Get in touch 

We’d welcome feedback: contact us at info@trialforge.org.