WHO announces China and India join clinical trial registry platform

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced the expansion of its clinical trial registry platform to include trial registers from China and India.

This is a major step for policymakers and scientists, who can now track local research activities, improve the quality of that research, and meet global standards for transparency. The general public also benefits by free access to a more complete picture of clinical research on diseases of interest in their own countries.

Both China and India have a rapidly expanding clinical trial research sector. The Chinese Clinical Trial Register was established in 2005 and has now met the criteria to submit its trial registry data to WHO's web search portal. The Clinical Trials Registry in India, announced last week, is the most recent of the world's five primary registries, and was built to meet WHO's reporting requirements.

"The addition of these two clinical trial registers is a milestone in a growing international movement for more transparency and accountability in research involving people," said WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. "This development will contribute to improving the ethical conduct of and public trust in clinical trials, which are vital for testing new life-saving treatments."

By participating as primary registers in WHO's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, these two registers will ensure that researchers, whether in the public or private sector in their respective countries, will be more accountable to the people who consent to participate in trials and to those who may benefit from research results.

Both registers will work closely with the medical journals in their region. They will build on the requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that clinical trials be publicly registered before the first participants are enrolled. This publication requirement gives companies and other research institutions a strong incentive to register their trials.

Through the WHO web search portal, people can get a global picture of planned, ongoing and completed clinical trials.