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.