Informative trials

INFORM launch page here  

The results of randomized trials underpin healthcare decisions made around the world. However, many trials have major design flaws and current review mechanisms fail to identify these flaws early enough for corrections to be made. Consequently, a large proportion of trials (some estimates start around 60%) go ahead despite flaws so serious that the informativeness of the trial to patients, clinicians, researchers and policy makers will, from the outset, be extremely limited. Such trials are a poor way of generating evidence to improve patient care and health and are a source of research waste.

In the INFORM project we aim to identify ways in which pre-funding peer review can be modified to improve trial informativeness (see Zarin et al). Although we will consider all five elements of Zarin et al’s informativeness model, we will focus on Importance, Design and Integrity because changes to these may entirely prevent an uninformative trial (unlike, for example, changes to Reporting).

[More – TBC]