Practical Clinical Trials

Decision makers in health care are increasingly interested in using high-quality scientific evidence to support clinical and health policy choices; however, the quality of available scientific evidence is often found to be inadequate. Reliable evidence is essential to improve health care quality and to support efficient use of limited resources. The widespread gaps in evidence-based knowledge suggest that systematic flaws exist in the production of scientific evidence, in part because there is no consistent effort to conduct clinical trials designed to meet the needs of decision makers. Clinical trials for which the hypothesis and study design are developed specifically to answer the questions faced by…