New analysis has indicated that the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the world's most transparent research funding body.
The findings, which come from TranspariMED, show that the NIHR is the only research funder globally to have adopted all 11 of the World Health Organisation’s guidelines for optimising clinical trial transparency and minimising waste.
These include:
- Ensuring all clinical trial results are publicly available within 12 months;
- Ensuring there are policies in place that prevent research waste and streamline new treatment innovations;
- Ensuring researchers release key data to public trial registries and publish their findings in scientific journals;
- Ensuring researchers follow best practice and sanction those who don’t.
Responding to the news, the NIHR’s chief executive, Professor Lucy Chappell, said: “We want to ensure that patients and the public benefit from all of our health and care research. By making sure that our research results are available in good time, and by reducing waste in research, we can help get new treatments out as soon as possible, and look at stopping those that are not effective.
“The NIHR has been working hard with its researchers and its public and patient collaborators to embed good practices across all of its areas. We are proud to see that this new analysis recognises our hard work in this area, and we will continue to challenge ourselves to improve further wherever possible.”
This follows the study from last year that similarly reported the NIHR was the most transparent research funder in Europe.
