The Clinical Research Initiative for Global Health (CRIGH) aims to support international collaboration on clinical research for the benefit of patients, healthcare professionals, and health systems. The initiative will seek to optimise clinical research programmes in participating countries, to develop global standards on clinical research, to promote the take-up of innovative methodology and technologies, and to enhance institutional capacity to rapidly and efficiently respond to global health challenges.
Launched in 2016, CRIGH is a follow-up to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Science Forum (GSF) initiative, introduced in 2009 to foster international cooperation in non-commercial trials. The GSF made various recommendations to address three main challenges to multi-country collaboration: persisting differences in administrative processes; inadequate regulation for some clinical trials; and uneven national and regional support for education, training and infrastructures for academic clinical trials.
CRIGH is the first global initiative to address the wide range of obstacles to global cooperation in clinical research, facilitating both multi-country commercial and non-commercial trials.
CRIGH includes six projects:
1. Infrastructure and funding: developing a network of high-quality and interoperable clinical trial units (CTUs), and promoting additional funding for independent, international trials.
2. Global core competencies: promoting harmonized education, training and careers for investigators and clinical research professionals.
3. Research ethics: promoting quality, consistency and training among research ethics committees.
4. Patient involvement: fostering the involvement of patients as trial participants and in trial design.
5. Comparative effectiveness research and socio-economic impact: promoting methodologies for efficient comparison of treatment strategies, and assessing the medical, social and economic impact of evidence.
6. Regulatory awareness: developing databases on ethical and regulatory requirements, and recommendations to facilitate international cooperation.
CRIGH will primarily focus on investigator-initiated trials and trials involving small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The CRIGH consortium is composed of Members and Observers - research institutions or organisations, or consortia of research institutions. ECRIN shares the secretariat with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).