Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Stakeholders' Views On The Routine Use Of N-Of-1 Trials To Improve Clinical Care And To Make Resource Allocation Decisions For Drug Use, Jane Nikles, Geoffrey K. Mitchell, Alexandra Clavarino, Michael J. Yelland, Christopher B. Del Mar

Christopher Del Mar

N-of-1 trials are empirical formal tests using a within-patient randomised, double-blind, cross-over comparison of drug and placebo (or another drug), which we adapted to study individual patients’ responses as a clinical tool to guide clinical management. We administered semi-structured interviews to gauge stakeholder perspectives on the possibility of using routine n-of-1 trials for this purpose. Stakeholders included government and non-government health care sector, and patient, clinician and consumer, organisations. Stakeholders supported more widespread implementation of n-of-1 trials, in a targeted fashion, with some caveats. Barriers to their widespread implementation included constraints on doctors’ time, doctors’ acceptance, drug company acceptance, patient …