Clinical trials hold enormous potential for benefiting patients, improving therapeutic regimens and ensuring advancement in medical practice that is evidence based. Unfortunately, the data and reports of various trials are often difficult to find and in some cases do not even exist as many trials abandoned or are not published due to "negative" or equivocal results. However, this tendency for availability of only selective information from the myriad clinical trials conducted is not commensurate with the practice of "evidence-based medicine". Today, world over, a need has been felt on the imperative for transparency, accountability and accessibility in order to re-establish public trust in clinical trial data. And this would be feasible only if all clinical trials conducted are registered in a centralized clinical trials registry. Registration of trials will ensure transparency, accountability and accessibility of clinical trials.
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The mission of the Clinical Trials Registry-India (CTRI) is to ensure that all clinical trials conducted in India are prospectively registered, i.e. before the enrolment of the first participant. Additionally, post-marketing surveillance studies, BA/BE studies as well as clinical studies as part of PG thesis are also expected to be registered in the CTRI.

The vision of the CTRI is to ensure that every clinical trial conducted in the region is prospectively registered with full disclosure of the trial data set items. While this register is meant primarily for trials conducted in India, the CTRI will also accept registration of trials conducted in other countries in the region, which do not have a Primary Registry of its own, provided ethics approval (in English) is available and the study has not begun enrolling.

The Clinical Trials Registry- India (CTRI), hosted at the ICMR's National Institute of Medical Statistics (http://icmr-nims.nic.in), is a free and online public record system for registration of clinical trials being conducted in India that was launched on 20^th July 2007 (www.ctri.nic.in). Initiated as a voluntary measure, since 15^th June 2009, trial registration in the CTRI has been made mandatory by the Drugs Controller General (India) (DCGI) (www.cdsco.nic.in). Moreover, Editors of Biomedical Journals of 11 major journals of India declared that only registered trials would be considered for publication^{1, 2}.

Today, any researcher who plans to conduct a trial involving human participants, of any intervention such as drugs, surgical procedures, preventive measures, lifestyle modifications, devices, educational or behavioral treatment, rehabilitation strategies as well as trials being conducted in the purview of the Department of AYUSH (http://indianmedicine.nic.in/) is expected to register the trial in the CTRI before enrollment of the first participant. Trial registration involves public declaration and identification of trial investigators, sponsors, interventions, patient population etc before the enrollment of the first patient. Submission of Ethics approval and DCGI approval (if applicable) is essential for trial registration in the CTRI. Multi-country trials, where India is a participating country, which have been registered in an international registry, are also expected to be registered in the CTRI. In the CTRI, details of Indian investigators, trial sites, Indian target sample size and date of enrollment are captured. After a trial is registered, trialists are expected to regularly update the trial status or other aspects as the case may be. After a trial is registered, all updates and changes will be recorded and available for public display.

Being a Primary Register of the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (http://www.who.int/ictrp/search/en/), registered trials are freely searchable both from the WHO's search portal, the ICTRP as well as from the CTRI (www.ctri.nic.in).
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