But that changed late last year with the launch of a single, comprehensive, publicly accessible database of the clinical trials at Stanford and affiliated facilities.
The database is available online at http://clinicaltrials.stanford.edu.
People seeking information on clinical trials can search the new Web site four ways: by disease, investigator, department or free-text search. This will allow patients to go to their primary-care physician and ask if a certain clinical trial might be helpful for them,” said Steven Alexander, medical director of the Stanford/Packard Center for Translational Research in Medicine, the organization that oversees Stanford’s clinical trials. Alexander is also a professor of pediatrics.
The site is designed to serve both patients and researchers.
“The Web is increasingly used by patients and referring physicians as the primary mechanism to learn about clinical trials,” said Harry Greenberg, senior associate dean for research at the School of Medicine. “To date, finding comprehensive information about studies at Stanford has been extremely difficult. By providing a single, easy-to-use Web site, this system helps the public to more easily discover Stanford’s studies.”
At any one time, about 1,000 clinical trials are going on at Stanford, with about 300 trials beginning and 300 trials ending each year, said Alexander.
Clinical trials entered into the new Stanford system will be automatically uploaded to the National Institutes of Health database, http://clinicaltrials. gov, a prerequisite for publishing studies in International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ publications. Alexander said information from Stanford’s database can be easily shared with collaborating institutions — such as Kaiser and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation — and can also be published on departmental Web sites within the medical school.
The registry will contain all “interventional” clinical studies conducted at Stanford. Studies that are purely “observational” in nature do not have to be registered.
Researchers who have questions about posting noncancer-related trials in the registry should contact Linda Walker in the SPCTRM office at (650) 498-7425 or linda.walker@stanford.edu. Those with questions about cancer trials should contact Ellen DiNucci in the Cancer Clinical Trials Office at 725-2839 or edinucci@stanford.edu.
Courtesy SUMC Office of
Communications and Medical Center Report
