Terms for clinical trial design and for evidence drawn from routine practice outside trials.
An adaptive trial design prospectively specifies how accumulating trial data may trigger changes to the trial while preserving interpretable and valid inference for its stated research questions.
A safeguard in randomised trials ensuring the assignment sequence is unknown to those enrolling participants until after enrolment, preventing selection bias.
A trial feature in which one or more parties, such as participants or assessors, are kept unaware of a given participant's treatment assignment.
An observational study comparing individuals with a specific outcome against similar individuals without it, examining differences in their prior exposure.
Records generated when providers bill insurers for services, capturing diagnoses, procedures, and prescriptions filled, though not direct clinical detail such as lab values.
A prospective research study in which participants receive one or more interventions to evaluate their effects on health-related outcomes.
An observational study following a group sharing a common exposure or characteristic forward in time to observe subsequent health outcomes.
Research directly comparing the benefits and harms of alternative methods for preventing, diagnosing, treating, or monitoring a condition, typically using real-world data.