In the latest effort to improve disclosure of clinical trial data, a UK parliamentary committee has criticized the government for “unacceptable” efforts to push the pharmaceutical industry and academia harder to release study information. And so, the Science and Technology Committee has just issued a report calling for trials to be registered and results to be published.
More specifically, the committee recommends that all clinical trials that are conducted in the UK, and all trials related to treatments used by the UK National Health Service, should be registered. The committee also wants registrations and publication of summary-level results to be made contractual requirements for all publicly-funded trials. And a retrospective audit should be conducted to ensure that large public trial grants awarded since 2000 were registered and published.
However, the committee is not in favor of placing anonymous individual patient-level data in the public domain in an “unrestricted manner” over concerns about patient privacy, but does support granting access to specific individuals if carefully managed by an independent gatekeeper.
“Many of the trials taking place today are unregistered and unpublished, meaning that the information that they generate remains invisible to both the scientific community and the public. This is unacceptable, undermining public trust, slowing the pace of medical advancement and potentially putting patients at risk,” committee chair Andrew Miller says in a statement.
