Grant: Catalyst: Methods Post Market DSE - Registry-randomized trials

The randomized-registry trial (RRT) is an emerging alternative to conventional randomized clinical trial (RCT) that may revolutionize the conduct of clinical research. RRTs combine elements of conventional RCTs and of observational studies by linking together data from dedicated registries and administrative health public databases. Health public databases contain information on the consumption of care, medical goods, and prescription drugs on all citizens covered by their provincial healthcare programme. Being able to use health public databases to conduct clinical research would results in a significant simplification in operational burden for researcher and into a drastic reduction in the costs necessary to perform high quality clinical research. However, before Canadian public databases can be used for that purpose, the accuracy of the information they contain must be verified. To do so, we want to compare the health information collected on Canadians who participated in clinical trials with the health information simultaneously collected in national and provincial health databases. Should we find the health public databases to be accurate, we could start using them to conduct reliable, cheap and accessible randomized-registry trials. As a result of this work, we will develop a platform for the advancement and democratization of medical research in Canada, which ultimately will improve the health of Canadians.