The COVID-19 Clinical Trial Tracker allows for a more nuanced understanding of the trials taking place in the international effort to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Acronyms
FPV - Favipiravir
IFN - Interferon (any class)
HCQ - Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine
LPV/r - Lopinavir/ritonavir
TCZ - Tocilizumab
Why does the trial tracker display different numbers to other registries?
Our trial tracker is used to identify registered trials investigating the use of interventional strategies for the treatment of COVID-19, or COVID-19 related symptoms. Specifically, we do not include purely observational studies, studies of diagnostic tests, or studies of prognostic markers for these patients. As such, the absolute number of trials will be smaller than from other databases which include all varieties of study design.
From where does your tracker obtain its data?
Our tracker utilizes the following data sources for information: WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, the European Clinical Trials Registry, clinicaltrials.gov, the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, the German Clinical Trials registry, the Japan Primary Registries Network, the Iranian Clinical Trial Registry, and the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. Note that we do not include news articles or press releases as indications that a trial is registered and going.
I notice a trial or protocol is not included in your registry that I believe should be included - how should I contact you?
We are always keen to collaborate with any group internationally and appreciate community based feedback. Please use the “Trials” or “Protocols” submission form located underneath the country count table to get in touch. If possible, please provide a specific registry ID in your response to facilitate quicker identification.
I am interested in further information about the registry - where should I go?
On the leftmost side of our user interface, an “Information” tab is available. Please select this to receive more detailed information about our processes. If you still would like further information that you feel is not represented in that document, or from this FAQ, please feel free to contact us using the “Submit Trials” form and we will be happy to respond.
What is the treatment network?
The treatment network is a visual representation of how the evidence is connected overall. Trials directly comparing therapies to one another are represented by nodes (treatments) and lines (comparisons between treatments). Single arm trials are not included in this diagram as they possess no connection to other treatments. The width of the connection represents the number of unique trials looking at that connection. The treatment network should not be considered a formal statistical tool to compare treatments, but rather a way to understand how the evidence is connected overall.
Why is the number of trials in a treatment network smaller than the number of trials on the world map?
Single arm trials are not incorporated into our network visualization tool, as they do not connect evidence between studies. Trials incorporated in our treatment network also require further review before upload and integration, and therefore we may be in the process of reviewing a trial which is present on the overall website, but not in the treatment network.
The COVID-19 Clinical Trial Tracker is headed by Kristian Thorlund, Edward Mills, and Cyrus Mehta with the goal of consolidating COVID-19 trial information. They aim to make vital information easily and widely available to the public, as well as further scientific efforts by helping fellow researchers work efficiently and plan trials.
Kristian Thorlund PhD
Dr. Kristian Thorlund is a Professor of Biostatistics at McMaster University and Senior Vice President of Real World Evidence at Cytel. Dr. Thorlund is a world-renowned biostatistician. He ranks among the top 1% highly cited researchers internationally in the past decade, has published several hundred peer reviewed research papers in medical and statistics journals. His research focuses on Bayesian statistical methods for evidence synthesis, innovative clinical trial designs, real world analytics, and global decision-making. His teaching and educational efforts focuses on making complex Bayesian methods widely applicable and interpretable to the global clinical research community. Dr. Thorlund sits on several clinical trial data monitoring committees and has been the principal statistical for over 50 completed clinical trials. Dr. Thorlund also frequently advises ministries of health on both discovery and delivery of health care.
Edward Mills PhD, FRCP Edin.
Dr. Edward Mills is a Professor at McMaster University Department of Health Research Methods, Impact, and Evaluation as well as the University of Rwanda, School of Public Health, and is Senior Vice President of Strategic Consulting at Cytel. Dr. Mills has over 400 peer-reviewed publications, including several papers in high impact medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, JAMA, and BMJ. His research focuses on adaptive trial designs, master protocols and innovative clinical trial designs, decision modelling, and Bayesian statistical methods, with a particular interest in applying these advanced methods to global health for low- and middle-income countries. In this context, Dr. Mills has led well over 100 innovative interventional clinical trials and prospective observational studies in low-to-middle income settings.
Cyrus Mehta PhD
Dr. Cyrus Mehta obtained his PhD from MIT and is Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University President and co-founder of Cytel Corporation. Dr. Mehta was among the first proponents of adaptive and innovative clinical trial designs and has published extensively on this topic over the past three decades. Through his role with Cytel, he has led the development of several state-of-the-art software for the design and implementation of adaptive clinical trials that are widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry and at academic research centers. Dr. Mehta consults extensively with the biopharmaceutical industry as well as non-for-profit organisations adaptive designs, and his team has offered several workshops on these topics over the past decade to educate thousands of researchers and stakeholders. and sits on several data monitoring committees for these types of clinical trials.
