Metadata-based analysis to improve clinical trial exchange

There are various, important information sources devoted to the diffusion of clinical trials, but they fail to achieve a complete coverage of clinical research. The demand for a mandatory public registration of clinical trials is emerging from different institutions, which are making efforts to develop common metadata schemas to both increase information exchange and make this information publicly available. The paper describes a metadata analysis of the various solutions of CT data representations adopted by important stakeholders such as national Health authorities, database information providers and standardisation organisations.