Clinical research in Finland in 2002 and 2007: quantity and type

Table 3 Relation of the characteristics of clinical research projects to funding, projects submitted to the official Finnish ethics committees in 2002 and 2007, % ¹

(n)	2002				2007
	Industry	Public	Health care⁴	P value⁶	Industry	Public	Health care⁴	P value⁶
	(228)	(129)	(414)	P value⁶	(257)	(122)	(322)	P value⁶
Type
Domestic drug research	20.2	6.2	7.5	<0.001	25.7	6.6	8.1	<0.001
International drug research	58.8	1.6	1.4	<0.001	57.6	4.1	0.6	<0.001
Other medical research	21.1	92.2	91.1	<0.001	16.7	89.3	91.3	<0.001
Main content
Treatment	80.3	23.2	48.3	<0.001	87.5	33.6	46.0	<0.001
Diagnostics and disease²	4.8	31.8	33.6	<0.001	2.7	23.8	28.8	<0.001
Biomedical³	7.0	23.3	5.6	0.478	3.1	16.4	4.7	0.328
Prevention	6.1	15.5	5.3	0.673	2.7	13.1	4.7	0.212
Other + missing	1.8	6.2	7.2	0.673	3.9	13.1	15.8	0.212
Approach
RCT	43.0	7.8	3.9	<0.001	59.9	6.6	4.3	<0.001
Trial + intervention	36.0	14.7	20.0	<0.001	28.8	20.5	16.2	<0.001
Observational	16.2	59.6	54.1	<0.001	5.8	56.6	61.5	<0.001
Documents + registers	1.3	3.1	7.6	<0.001	2.7	5.7	8.4	0.004
Other + missing	3.5	14.8	14.4	<0.001	2.8	10.6	9.6	0.004
Data collection site ²
University hospital	57.0	56.6	72.5	<0.001	38.5	38.5	53.4	<0.001
Other public health care facility	9.6	16.4	15.5	0.486	16.7	18.9	26.7	0.760
Private care	16.3	3.8	2.4	<0.001	17.9	3.3	1.7	<0.001
Other place	14.0	21.6	6.2	<0.001	19.9	22.1	9.2	<0.001
Missing	3.1	1.6	3.4		7.0	17.2	9.0
Total	100	100	100		100	100	100
Non-commercial ³	20.6	96.1	98.8	<0.001	15.6	98.4	99.1	<0.001
Multi-center study ⁵
National	46.1	34.9	16.4	<0.001	46.7	33.6	22.0	<0.001
International	61.0	9.3	3.6	<0.001	59.1	12.3	3.1	<0.001

¹For the explanations of the categories, see Appendix 1.
²In multi-center studies, the place of the principal investigator was chosen for the main research site.
³Administratively non-commercial i.e. exempted from REC fee.
⁴Health care includes state subsidy to hospitals to do research, work done within normal working hours or on own time.
⁵A project can be both national and international multicenter project.
⁶Comparison of industry funded projects to health care funded projects (t-test); in calculation P values, projects with missing information were ignored.

ISSN: 1478-4505