How clinical trial results are used

Researchers and doctors use clinical trial results to decide how best to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.

The results of treatment trials provide evidence for:

the approval of new treatments or existing treatments for a new purpose
clinical guidelines used by healthcare professionals

These results help to shape and improve cancer care.

Collecting information

A member of the research team enters the results of everyone’s tests, scans and questionnaires onto a form or computer system. Once they have collected all the information, the statistics experts (statisticians) begin to look at it.

Statisticians use a computer to analyse the results. They look at things like:

how well the treatment worked
what side effects people had and when
how the treatment affected people’s quality of life

Then the research team produce a report to explain what they found.

Read more about what trial results mean.

Clinical trial reports never contain any patient names or other details that could identify you. They are all confidential.

Find out how information about you is collected.

Where to find trial results

Results are usually published in medical journals and presented at meetings and conferences for cancer specialists. We also include a plain English summary of results for many trials on our clinical trial database.

Find out more about where and when trial results are published.

Prescribing new treatments

A new treatment may become a standard treatment if trial results show that it is better than the current standard treatment. It must be licensed before doctors can prescribe it. This also applies to an existing treatment being used for a new condition.

The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or the European Medicines Agency (EMA) can license treatments.

Read more about how drugs are licensed in the UK.

Once a drug is licensed, in theory doctors can prescribe it. But it is often some time before it is widely available on the NHS in the UK. NHS doctors usually need to wait for it to be approved before they can prescribe it.

There are several organisations which approve treatments in the UK:

England - The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
Scotland - The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC)
Northern Ireland - The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (HPSS)
Wales - The All Wales Medicine Strategy Group (AWMSG)

They look at how much treatments cost and how well they work. They then decide whether doctors can prescribe them or not.

Sometimes the panel who review treatments are not sure whether a treatment should be prescribed or not. They may then decide to review it again at a later date once there is more evidence. If this happens, you may be able to get the treatment under the Cancer Drugs Fund system.