Importance of Randomized Control Trials
Large-scale and long-term, RCTs can, in turn, generate further research projects and capacity-strengthening opportunities.
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New era in medical decision-making
PhD student, Bireshwar Sinha explains that medicine has entered an era of 鈥渆vidence-based decision-making鈥� where there is conscious and reasonable use of the current, best scientific evidence in decision-making for individual treatment and for population-wide health action. Well-conducted large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide data that can be used to inform policy and practice.
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Gold-standard for estimating treatment effect
RCTs are considered to be the 鈥済old-standard鈥� method for estimating treatment effect. The random allocation of participants, when undertaken properly, minimizes as much as possible the potential for bias. A well-executed RCT can provide highly credible evidence about the efficacy of an intervention and the effectiveness of a health programme. Thus RCTs play a critical role in improving people鈥檚 health and welfare. This also holds true for vulnerable populations in low-income countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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RCTs are costly
Few research groups have long-term core funding that enables them to undertake RCTs. However, the Research Council of Norway鈥檚 CoE funding scheme, enabled the establishment of the CoE, the , which is now undertaking several important RCTs. Learn more from the .
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Generation of spin-offs
Well designed, large-scale intervention studies generate so much data that they also have tremendous potential for spin-off and add-on studies. In addition to expanding the relevance of the initial study, such studies provide important capacity-strengthening opportunities for young researchers. They provide them with excellent opportunities to design and lead their own research projects that will, in turn, build on the RCT results.听