Researchers are increasingly requesting access to existing clinical trial data to conduct their own studies, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers — led by Sean A. Coady of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md. — analyzed administrative records of requests for access to the NHLBI data repository. From January 2000 to May 2016, 370 investigators requested clinical trial data from the repository.
The researchers found requests for trial data have increased in recent years. More than half (53 percent) of data requests took place during the last 4.4 years of the study period. The vast majority (72 percent) of data requests aimed to study new questions, while only two requests sought verification of the original findings.
In total, 277 secondary articles were published with data from 47 existing trials.