| What is clinical research? |
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 Laboratory analysis Clinical research is all about studying treatments, management and care in people with medical conditions. Often this is thought of as trials of new drugs but this is by no means the only type of clinical research. Clinical research includes many different types of intervention, for example lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise can be studied using clinical research, or different forms of patient education could be compared in a clinical research project. Clinical research also includes studying the genetic make-up of particular diseases and looking at how particular conditions occur in the population. The important thing that defines clinical research is that it involves human participants - people who volunteer to take part in specific studies or research projects. It is not only people who have a particular medical condition that can participate in clinical research, often healthy people also participate. This allows us to compare a disease or medical condition with the normal healthy situation.  Measuring blood pressure Laboratory research can only provide limited information about diseases and medical conditions. Without research volunteers it would be impossible for research ideas to become part of clinical practice that benefits patients. Clinical research is a very specialised part of research and there are many rules and regulations that dictate what can and cannot be done and how research should be conducted. All research involving human participants must go through a series of approvals designed to safeguard the volunteers. Only people trained in conducting this type of research are allowed to run studies. In these short video montages we have tried to answer some of the questions that people invited to participate in clinical research often ask. |
