Introduction
Research varies in value for clinical practice, with substantial wastage
in the evidence pipeline.(1,2) Most current tools focus on
reporting,(3,4) which helps readers in critical appraisal after the
research has been conducted and analysed. However, this does not capture
whether research is useful or not in the first place. Fundamentally,
usefulness needs to be considered at the design phase for the reported
outputs to be of potential benefit to patients.
A seminal paper in 2016 (5) highlighted the need to capture usefulness
at the question, design and planning phase of the study. This way, it
will be possible to know prospectively whether undertaking a particular
study will upon completion have the potential to improve outcomes.
A search in Medline and Google Scholar (Nov 2019) using the terms
‘Usefulness’ and ‘Randomised Controlled Trial’ provided 15,473 results.
After screening the most recent 1500 results, we found only one
publication discussing Usefulness in medical research (5) but no other
publication discussing the usefulness of the randomised controlled
trials (RCTs) themselves, rather the usefulness of the intervention
under study. Narrowing the search to ‘Usefulness’ and ‘randomised
controlled trials’ and ‘preterm birth*’ provided no results.
Here, we aimed to develop a research usefulness tool collating published
criteria and examined if RCTs addressing preterm birth were useful. By
quantifying these eight criteria consisting of 13 items, we aimed to get
insights into the current status of research regarding its usefulness,
the evolution of its usefulness over time, and where potential
improvement is needed. Preterm birth (PTB) is a biomedical research
topic that has a major global health burden (6,7) and has a fairly
mature track record of research being performed over many decades.
Reducing PTB is a top health priority and there is a large number of
RCTs focusing on PTB prevention published to date. However, these trials
have been able to provide only limited guidance on how to deal best with
PTB.(8) Mapping their usefulness would be helpful for understanding the
status quo and developing future PTB trials.