Epidemiological Study of Randomized Trials (ESORT)
ESORT is led by a collaborative team of researchers at the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and the George Institute for Global Health, both at the University of Oxford. ESORT have kindly offered to share details of their study with The Global Health Network. If you would like to Requests for further information can be directed to the lead investigators, Email: Dr. Ayodele Odutayo, Twitter: @aodutayo) and Connor Emdin, Twitter: @connoremdin.
Overview of the ESORT Study
High-income countries (HICs) have been at the forefront of development and innovation in the conduct of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, increasing costs, long start-up times and difficulties in patient recruitment have become important barriers to conducting RCTs in these regions. In contrast, LMICs have recently emerged as important hubs for research, in large part due to increasing research capacity within these countries.
To date, there have been few methodological studies of the conduct of RCTs in LMICs and most analyses have been limited to specific journals, specialties or countries. Accordingly, the aim of ESORT is to assess the epidemiology and methodological conduct of a representative sample of RCTs conducted in HICs and LMICs and thereby inform ongoing research capacity building efforts.