Clinical Research Toolbox

A proper literature search is integral to defining your research question and designing your study. Here are a few examples of available resources that can help. Check with your own institution for specific services offered.

• UBC Library Literature Review Guide
• Cochrane Library
• University of Toronto Library Guide

If your research question is too broad, you will have difficulty designing a focused study to answer your hypothesis. If it’s too narrow, you will have difficulty finding appropriate participants.

Engaging your research population during grant or project development is now required by most funders. Refining your idea with the community will give you a pragmatic view on the applicability and feasibility of your research. Engaging with the CTN community-centered Knowledge Mobilization Hub helps researchers successfully engage with community members.

Seek experts who will provide you with advice and review your proposal. Find out if your institution will assist with project/grant development.

CIHR is the primary source of federal funds for health research in Canada.

Other suggestions for funding are:

• Provincial and institutional funding competitions
• Disease-related foundations (e.g. CANFAR, Heart and Stroke Foundation)
• Industry partners. A pharmaceutical or medical device company may provide direct funding for a project via their established investigator-initiated study funding mechanism, or they may consider donating the study intervention (e.g. drug or device)
• Hospital Foundations

While you can use your proposal as a template for your protocol, a proposal is written to only obtain support for your study. A study protocol contains detailed instructions on how the study will be conducted and includes information to meet regulatory requirements (if applicable). Advancing Health provides protocol templates for use in interventional and non-interventional clinical studies.

Before starting any type of research study, you must obtain approval from your local ethics committee, obtain organizational/institutional approval, and fully execute any required contracts or agreements. This includes finalizing the CTN Affiliation Agreement and the Agreement between PHC/UBC and local site institution.

If your study is testing a new drug, or an approved drug outside of its approved use, then you will have to submit a Clinical Trial Application (CTA) to Health Canada.

All Health Canada-regulated clinical trials require maintenance of essential documents. Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is an international standard for the design, conduct, performance, recording, analyzing, and reporting of research that involves human participants.

The CTN provides support in clinical trial/project management and monitoring. The CTN can also support your study with data management from data collection worksheets design to reports generation.

After you have completed data collection, and ensured the data is clean and complete, you can begin your data analyses following the study Statistical Analysis Plan. This will likely involve programming data summaries, tables, and plots for abstracts, presentation or manuscripts.

The CTN+ Knowledge shares plain language results via website, social media, e-newsletter, and community outreach. Help us promote your work, please acknowledge CTN support on papers, posters, and presentations and inform the CTN of any publications and presentations resulting from your CTN supported studies

For clinical trials regulated by Health Canada, you are required to retain study documents for 15 years after trial completion. If your study is not a regulated clinical trial, you should retain your records per institutional requirements. Don’t forget to close the study with your local Ethics Board, and with any funding agencies.

Download a Close-out Visit Report and a Close-out Letter.

Further Information:

Network of Networks
Health Canada Clinical Trials
Common clinical research terminology