Foundations of Clinical Research Data Management: Orientation

Clinical research is one of the major routes through which societies generate evidence about health, disease, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care delivery. It may involve clinical trials of new medicines or vaccines, observational studies of disease progression, surveillance systems that monitor public health events, diagnostic evaluations, implementation studies, registries, or operational research designed to improve health services. Although these studies differ in design and scale, they share a common dependency: their conclusions are only as reliable as the data on which they are based.