NIH Collaboratory investigators Drs. Greg Simon, Rachel Richesson, and Adrian Hernandez published an opinion piece in Healthcare arguing that clinical trials investigators should align their dissemination processes with industry-sponsored trials to favor speed, and that years-long delays in dissemination reduce the relevance of clinical research.
“Delays reduce the ability for researchers to apply trial findings to new research questions, impede clinicians from having the most up-to-date information, and perhaps most importantly, are a disservice to patients who could benefit from the information.”
The authors use experiences with pragmatic trials supported by the NIH Collaboratory to explore faster dissemination of results, and suggest the following solutions:
- Real-time access to outcome data
- Continuous data curation and cleaning
- Immediate data analysis
- Rapid reporting of trial results
Much change is needed to reach these goals. The authors suggest that by modeling processes after industry-sponsored trials, researchers may be able to improve the speed and quality of results reporting.
“Cultural incentives are aligned in industry sponsored trials to favor speed: readiness for generalizing topline results is considered valuable to shareholders, and the culture encourages a system where data are liquid, available, and continuously cleaned and curated, such that topline results can be reported within a timespan of two weeks rather than two years.”
As part of the NIH Collaboratory’s commitment to dissemination and sharing, all NIH Collaboratory Trials are expected to share data and resources, and topline results are reported in our weekly Grand Rounds Webinars.