Improving access to clinic trial data

Cardiff University Systematic Review Network (SysNet) has announced that the speaker for their annual lecture will this year be Dr Carl Heneghan of Oxford University.

The title of Dr Heneghan's talk will be 'Systematic reviews and access to clinical trial data' – an issue considered vital by the Prime Minister, who has in recent months expressed the need for easier access and availability to patient data for research.

Systematic reviews have increasingly replaced traditional narrative reviews and expert commentaries as a way of summarising research evidence.

The issue of systematic review gained unprecedented impetus following the publication of the book 'Bad Pharma' by Ben Goldacre, which detailed the misuse of evidence by the pharmaceutical industry, especially the way that negative trial data goes missing in action, and how easy it would be to fix this.

SysNet was established five years ago and aims to bring together the expertise from the Academic Schools within Cardiff University, to share best practice in undertaking high-quality systematic reviews.

This year's lecture will be held on 15 April at 2pm in the Small Lecture Theatre in Cardiff's Dental School. To register or to express an interest, please email sysnet@cardiff.ac.uk.