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Letters Liberating clinical trial data

Benefits of, and barriers to, reactivating dormant trials

BMJ 2015; 351 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h5298 (Published 14 October 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h5298
  1. Ruth Gilbert, professor of clinical epidemiology1,
  2. Katie Harron, research fellow in statistics2,
  3. Lorraine Dearden, professor of economics and social statistics3
  1. 1UCL Institute of Child Health, London WC1N 1EH, UK
  2. 2London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  3. 3UCL Institute of Education, London, UK
  1. r.gilbert{at}ucl.ac.uk

The UK should follow Ontario and reactivate its treasure trove of dormant trials to generate new science through linkage with administrative data.1 Many groups stand to benefit. For example, drug regulators could encourage linkage of dormant and new trials to administrative data to monitor long term safety of drugs.2 Linkage would also lead to better evidence on the long …

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