Making it less of a trial to find important medical evidence: Faculty of 1000 launch F1000Trials

Faculty of 1000 has launched a new product, F1000Trials (http://f1000.com/trials), an effective way to be alerted to new clinical trial-related articles specifically designed for the needs of practicing physicians and clinical researchers. The press release (http://f1000.com/resources/F1000Trials_Launch_PR.pdf) includes comments from Prof Peter Sandercock (University of Edinburgh, and Principal Investigator on several major clinical trials) and Dr Ben Goldacre (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and award winning writer).

F1000Trials is a continually updated, comprehensive database of randomized controlled trial articles (including early phase oncology studies),  as well as systematic review and meta-analysis articles, drawn from over 300 key general and specialist medical journals (http://f1000.com/trials/about#journal-list). The F1000 Faculty Members (http://f1000.com/trials/thefaculty) provide expert assessment of newly published articles and write reviews of the majority of these articles, recommending the most noteworthy by assigning star ratings and providing reasons for the recommendation.

Other features of F1000Trials (http://f1000.com/trials/about) include:

·         Threaded publication trail – links to trial registries and other PubMed-indexed articles about the same trial

·         Links to related articles

·         Powerful drug search engine that also enables searching by disease and condition

·         Identification of trials that change clinical practice and trials with negative results

F1000Trials is in its beta phase, and is currently free to access to anyone who registers on the website. Faculty of 1000 invites all people interested in improving how we access and communicate information about clinical trials to try out F1000Trials and send their feedback.