About Clinical Trial Registration

The registration of all interventional trials is considered to be a scientific, ethical and moral responsibility because:

 

• There is a need to ensure that decisions about health care are informed by all of the available evidence
• It is difficult to make informed decisions if publication bias and selective reporting are present
• The Declaration of Helsinki states that "Every clinical trial must be registered in a publicly accessible database before recruitment of the first subject".
• Improving awareness of similar or identical trials will make it possible for researchers and funding agencies to avoid unnecessary duplication
• Describing clinical trials in progress can make it easier to identify gaps in clinical trials research
• Making researchers and potential participants aware of recruiting trials may facilitate recruitment
• Enabling researchers and health care practitioners to identify trials in which they may have an interest could result in more effective collaboration among researchers. The type of collaboratio
• Registries checking data as part of the registration process may lead to improvements in the quality of clinical trials by making it possible to identify potential problems (such as problematic randomization methods) early in the research process

 

Source: WHO