Clinical trials funded by a large US funder will have to be registered before they begin and their results made available within one year of completion under its proposed policy. The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is currently deciding how it will make the findings from research that it funds public. Since it started awarding grants in December 2012, PCORI has approved 360 projects worth $671 million in 39 States.
Dr Ben Goldacre, author and co-founder of AllTrials:
It’s great to see PCORI joining so many other organisations in recognising the unacceptable adverse impact on patient care that arises from unreported trials. However their proposals could and must go further: they must require reporting of all previous trials they have funded. There is no excuse for permitting such important information to be withheld from doctors, researchers, patients and payers.
José Merino, US clinical research editor, and Elizabeth Loder, acting head of research, BMJ USA in The BMJ:
We applaud PCORI’s ambitious efforts to promote transparency and dissemination of research findings. If implemented, these actions will set a precedent for other funders and signal the importance of making research fully accessible. Registration of studies (prospective for trials, retrospective for other studies) and posting of results will let patients, clinicians, and researchers know that a study has been done, reduce the problem of publication bias, facilitate incorporation of results into systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and fulfill ethical obligations to study participants and funders of research. We encourage PCORI to go further by mandating prospective registration of all studies funded after 2014 as well as requiring funding recipients to share their primary data with others.
Please support PCORI’s good proposals by commenting online before 11:59 pm EST today, 7th November 2014.