Information Technology in Clinical Research

Definition of clinical research and clinical trial

In World Health Organization’s definition, “for the purpose of registration, a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcome” (WHO, 2014). National Institute of Health specified the differences between clinical research and clinical trials. “Clinical research is research that directly involves a particular person or group of people, or that uses materials from humans, such as their behavior or samples of their tissue. A clinical trial is one type of clinical research that follows a pre-defined plan or protocol. By taking part in clinical trials, participants can not only play a more active role in their own health care, but they can also access new treatments and help others by contributing to medical research” (National Institute of Health, 2012).

Discipline-specific information requirements

The nature of a clinical trial is to prove or refute a hypothesis by generating, collecting, and analyzing data (Krishanankutty, Bellary, Kumar & Moodahadu, 2012). Acquiring data is the first step and it is a difficult and time-consuming progress. After the data are obtained, they should be appropriately integrated and stored for the purpose of retrieving, comparing, manipulating, and investigating. To maximum the deployment of information technologies in clinical research, the discipline-specific requirements for different types of clinical research should be addressed.

Population-Based research, such as public health research and health services research, can be more productive because of the large numbers of subjects. Using the electronic medic...

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...al trial participation award. Retrieved from http://www.conquercancerfoundation.org/cancer-professionals/grants-awards/clinical-trials-participation-award

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Information Technology Roundtable (2014, April 04).The use of electronic health records for clinical research: recommendations to advance the field . Retrieved from http://www.clinicalresearchforum.org/vertical/Sites/{97FFC4B0-AA89-45B2-8F74-9693F47D3CB0}/uploads/5_EHR4-4-14_white_paper_draft(1).pdf