Appreciation of the Need for Informatics Support in Applied Clinical Research

Introduction The potential advantages of the use of informatics support for applied clinical research and clinical trials seems to be evident, however their real use is very variable. In medical informatics we tend to focus on tools for patient care rather than clinical rsearch and it would seem profitable to address the question what are the bafriers to current implementation of informatics tools to serve clinical research and what are the attitudes to informatics support expressed by personnel involved in clinical research. The quality of a clinical research project can be considered to relate to ree major components, conception and protocol definition, organization and execution, and analysis and publication. Each component is vital to success and can benefit form informatics support. This study considers more the organization and execution component, where in fact much of the financial investment of the study is concentrated and which can be labour intensive and time consuming.