Research in common parlance refers to a search for knowledge. Clinical research is a branch of medical science dealing with any research or study in living humans. ‘Clinical trials’ is the term interchangeably used with the terms ‘clinical research’ or ‘clinical study’. Although there are many definitions of clinical trials, they are generally considered to be biomedical or health-related research studies in human beings that follow a pre-defined and –designed protocol. Clinical trial is defined as “a systematic study of new drug(s) in human subject(s) to generate data for discovering and/ or verifying the clinical, pharmacological (including pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic) and/ or adverse effects with the objective of determining safety and/ or efficacy of the new drug”.
This topic covers: Objectives of research and Types of Research.