This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Speaker calls on research community to serve information needs of patients, clinicians

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Clinical research should be more attuned to the needs of patients and clinicians, Sir Iain Chalmers said during a plenary lecture at the 50th European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology meeting.

Chalmers, coordinator of The James Lind Initiative, said more than $100 billion US dollars are put toward supporting biomedical research worldwide every year, resulting in an estimated 1 million research publications. However, there are inefficiencies in the research system that could be reduced.

“The ultimate outcome of all health research should be to improve patient health and well-being. When carrying out new research, resources should be allocated as effectively as possible to projects that will reduce important uncertainties and offer the public good returns on its investments,” Chalmers said in a press release issued by the society. “Our work has shown that this is not the case currently and that there is still a large waste of resources in the way that health research is carried out and reported.”

Chalmers discussed several recommendations for improving productivity, including:

• Encourage admission of uncertainty about the effects of health practices and policies.
• Increase the capacity for preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews of research evidence.
• Outlaw biased underreporting of health research and require public registration of controlled trials.
• Promote research relevant to people planning, working in and using the health services.
• Refuse to support new research unless systematic reviews of existing evidence show that it is ethical and likely to be worthwhile.

“There are a number of areas we have identified where this waste can be cut, including ensuring that patients and clinicians are consulted about their research priorities and that all findings of well-conducted research are published, regardless of direction and strength of results. Although there are admirable exceptions, the research community as a whole needs to examine the way it functions and move toward making research more accessible and accountable to the end users — patients, clinicians and the general public,” Chalmers said in the release.

For more information:

• Chalmers I. The research community needs to serve the information needs of patients and professionals more effectively. Presented at: the 50th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology; Sept. 25-28, 2011; Glasgow, U.K.

Disclosure: Chalmers reports no relevant financial disclosures.

Follow EndocrineToday.com on Twitter.