NDDIC News

National Institutes of Health Launches ClinicalTrials.gov

A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) database gives the public easy access to information about research studies. The consumer-friendly database, ClinicalTrials.gov, has information on more than 4,000 Federal and private medical studies involving patients and others at more than 47,000 locations nationwide. The database may be reached at ClinicalTrials.gov or through the National Library of Medicine's website at www.nlm.nih.gov on the Internet.

Clinical trials are medical research studies that seek to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of new drugs, medical procedures, or other means of treating, diagnosing, or preventing diseases. This type of research helps investigators learn how people respond to medications or other therapeutic approaches; such investigations may lead to new and improved treatments. Trials test which treatment works best for a particular disease or condition.

ClinicalTrials.gov provides patients, families, and the public with easy access to information about the location of clinical trials, their design and purpose, criteria for participation, and, in many cases, further information about the disease and treatment under study. Entries include links to individuals responsible for recruiting participants for each study.

ClinicalTrials.gov grew out of 1997 legislation that required the Department of Health and Human Services, through the NIH, to broaden the public's access to information about clinical trials on a wide range of diseases by establishing a registry for both federally and privately funded trials "on drugs for serious or life-threatening diseases and conditions" (Section 113, "Information Program on Clinical Trials for Serious or Life-Threatening Diseases," Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997, Public Law 105-115).

In the first phase of this project, the database's creators focused on studies that are being funded by NIH or conducted on the NIH campus. In the second phase, they will add information about non-NIH-sponsored trials from other Federal agencies and private industry.

ClinicalTrials.gov is a completely confidential website. No registration or personal identification of any kind is required, and people who search the site will not be contacted by the sponsors of clinical trials or by anyone else.

NIH Publication No. 01–4552
March 2001