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National Library of Medicine Announces Update of ClinicalTrials.gov

 

Refreshed Version Features New Style and Content, Plus Easier Navigation

A new integrated homepage and updated graphic design for its popular ClinicalTrials.gov database was announced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health. Users will now have access to new and reorganized content about clinical research, background information about the site, search tools, and help for those maintaining study records. Core content and functions of the ClinicalTrials.gov site - including the basic and advanced search, search results options, and the study record data - remain the same. The re-design was undertaken to meet the needs of the many different users of the site, including patients, clinicians, researchers, and the media.

ClinicalTrials.gov is the NLM-developed Web-based registry and results database of clinical research studies. Launched in 2000, the Web site provides patients, clinicians, researchers, and the public with access to information about interventional and observational studies. Today, ClinicalTrials.gov provides information on more than 133,000 clinical research studies in all 50 states and in 179 countries. The site receives more than 95 million page views per month and 60,000 unique visitors daily. 

Since its creation, ClinicalTrials.gov has expanded in terms of scope, features and intended audiences, in response to the evolving policies and laws promoting the reporting of clinical trial information.   For example, Congress enacted legislation in 2007 that added the first public results database. As a result, summary information about clinical trials of US Food and Drug Administration-approved medical products would be publicly available, whether or not the results were published in the medical literature. New user interface features in ClinicalTrials.gov were launched in 2008 to display the results data tables and allow for searching of studies with results. (For details, see ClinicalTrials.gov to Include Basic Results Data.) Over time, the Web site has featured the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey tool to collect feedback from users and usability evaluations have been conducted. The results of this user feedback as well as the changing nature of the Web site provided the motivation for redesigning ClinicalTrials.gov.

"ClinicalTrials.gov is a trusted resource relied upon by trial participants, researchers, health care professionals and the general public," noted NLM Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD. "This updated site is organized with the user's needs in mind, providing the tools required for easier navigation."

A full description of the enhancements and new features of the site appears at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ja12/ja12_clinicaltrials.html 

 

Clinical Trial Web Page

 

Contact Information

Your comments and questions are welcome, via the Contact NLM Help Desk link in the footer of each page.

About the National Library of Medicine (NLM): NLM is the world's largest library of the health sciences and collects, organizes and makes available biomedical science information to scientists, health professionals and the public. For more information, visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the US Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

 

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