News & Media

World Patient Safety Day 2025

World Patient Safety Day was established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote global awareness and action on patient safety. It aims to bring together patients, families, healthcare workers, policymakers, and communities to improve safety in healthcare systems worldwide.

Patient and participant safety within Clinical Trials is at the forefront of clinical trial delivery.  The UK has a very robust structure in place to ensure all clinical research is planned, delivered, and reported in line with legal requirements and guidance which ensures patient safety and data integrity (to ensure data generated within clinical trials is reliable) at all times*. 

The UKCRC Registered CTU Network has a key role within the structure of clinical trial delivery in the UK as it has responsibility for managing a process which provides a registration status to UK Clinical Trial Units (CTUs)**.

This process ensures that each registered CTU has the required level of experience and expertise in place to see a research project from concept thought to reporting. In this way, registration acts as a hallmark of quality.  

Potential investigators, research staff, funders of clinical trials and – importantly – participants and patients can therefore be confident of CTU expertise, quality assurance, and appropriate systems being in place throughout the trial lifecycle.  

CTUs work across a wide variety of medical conditions, with some specialising in paediatric research and medicines for children – the theme for this year’s World Patient Safety Day.  Units also lead the way in novel trial methodology such as the use of adaptive and platform trials

Further information on all registered CTUs can be found here.

*There are several regulations (legal requirements) in place for the conduct of clinical trials. CTUs have processes in place to ensure compliance with these, and there is oversight of activities to ensure adherence with patient safety being considered and reviewed at all times.   

**CTUs are specialist non-commercial units with the expertise to design, conduct, analyse and publish clinical trials. Each unit has specialist staff across a number of roles including statistics, trial management, data management, and quality assurance.  Patient safety is the priority at all times starting from the development of the initial research idea, throughout the conduct of each trial, right up until closure a.   CTUs routinely ensure that patient and public involvement is embedded within every clinical trial, with Patient and Public members usually a member of Trial oversight groups.