Senior experts advocate for higher quality trials to drive better healthcare on a global scale

The Good Clinical Trials Collaborative’s new film sees experts discuss the importance of high-quality trials in advancing global healthcare and the role of good guidance in influencing change. They offer valuable insights on the significance of good trials, their critical attributes and how they can be improved.

Recent estimates suggest that more than half of all clinical trials fail to ever produce an informative answer, resulting in substantial waste and harm. This problem was borne out again during the COVID-19 pandemic when only a fraction of the thousands of trials conducted was sufficiently well designed to produce actionable, reliable evidence. [1]

Joining Professor Sir Martin Landray, who leads the Collaborative, are:

• Emer Cooke, Executive Director, European Medicines Agency
• Dr. Ian Hudson, Senior Advisor, Integrated Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Member of the Collaborative’s Steering Group
• Dr. Amrit Ray, Biopharmaceutical R&D Executive; Independent Board Director; Member of the Collaborative’s Steering Group
• Renée Leverty, Associate Director, Research Together™, Duke Clinical Research Institute
• Dr. Fredonia Williams, Assistant Regional Director, Mended Hearts

The film spotlights the role of good guidance in addressing challenges and opportunities in the clinical trials ecosystem. Developed with the inputs from a global, multidisciplinary community of experts and stakeholders, the Collaborative’s Guidance for Good Randomized Clinical Trials presents a framework for users to address five fundamental principles of a good trial and supports the delivery of a well-planned, well-run and clinically relevant trial in any setting and for any type of intervention.

“Grounded in key scientific and ethical principles, our Guidance provides universally relevant, flexible and quality-focused advice for all those involved in designing, conducting, overseeing, and participating in clinical trials,” said Sir Martin. “By following these principles, we aspire to tackle some of the most significant challenges facing trials today and ensure patients receive the best care based on the most reliable evidence.”

The guidance was published on the Collaborative’s website in May 2022. Since then, the Collaborative has been active in promoting the awareness of good trials and understanding of the guidance principles through advocacy, communications and educational outreach activities.  The video will be a key resource as it continues to engage with the clinical trials community across the world.

“We hope the film will provoke people to reflect on the significance of generating good evidence from good clinical trials”, continued Nick Medhurst, who leads the Collaborative’s secretariat. “Good evidence is a bedrock of improving healthcare and that is the goal we all share.”

REFERENCES

[1] Bugin K, Woodcock J. Trends in COVID-19 therapeutic clinical trials. Nat Rev Drug Discov 2021: 20: 254-55