Update on Clinical Trials Registration and Results Reporting Requirements; and Methodologic Issues and Next Steps in the Implementation of the Results Database

Deborah A. Zarin, M.D., is a Senior Scientist at the National Institutes of Health, and the Director of ClinicalTrials.gov at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications in the National Library of Medicine. In this capacity, Dr. Zarin oversees the development and operation of an international registry of clinical trials.

Previous positions held by Dr. Zarin include Director of the Technology Assessment Program at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Director of the Practice Guidelines program at the American Psychiatric Association. In these positions, Dr. Zarin conducted systematic reviews and related analyses in order to develop clinical and policy recommendations.  Dr. Zarin’s academic interests are in the area of evidence based clinical and policy decision making, and she is the author of over 70 peer reviewed articles.

Dr. Zarin graduated from Stanford University and received her doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical School.  She completed a clinical decision making fellowship and is board certified in general psychiatry, as well as in child and adolescent psychiatry.

From ClinicalTrials.gov Website:
ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions. A clinical trial (also called clinical research) is a research study in human volunteers to answer specific health questions. Interventional trials determine whether experimental treatments or new ways of using known therapies are safe and effective under controlled environments. Observational trials address health issues in large groups of people or populations in natural settings.

ClinicalTrials.gov currently contains 68,149 trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies and private industry. Studies listed in the database are conducted in all 50 states and in 161 countries. ClinicalTrials.gov receives over 40 million page views per month and 50,000 visitors daily.