UW Health Study Finder offers new way for patients to learn about clinical trials

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - Clinical trials and studies can be important in providing new information towards finding cures or treatments for different ailments and health problems. Now, UW Health and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health are launching a website to help track those studies.

UW Health Study Finder is a new website put together by the office of clinical trials that list studies and trials that are going on at UW. Dr. William Hartman, the principal investigator for several of the COVID-19 clinical trials, said the resource allows patients to easily search and find whether or not they may qualify for a study.

“They just enter some simple information, click search, and it will give them the trials that they could qualify for and the phone numbers so they can talk with the coordinators and better understand what the trial is all about and what their commitment to the trial would be,” he said.

Hartman said clinical trials are important in advancing medicine.

“Medicine progresses through clinical trials,” he said. “Discovery happens when people can volunteer to be part of trials, whether it’s to discover something or see if a treatment that was used for something else might be good for their particular ailment.”

For example, there are currently five COVID-19 studies listed on the Study Finder that patients could learn more about. Hartman said they’ve been lucky that several trials they’ve been a part of have seemed to help.

Hartman said they always need participation in studies to ensure the most accurate results.

“Especially important to the clinical trials that are ongoing right now too is that we need as much minority involvement as possible, and we keep careful track of that,” he said. “This is a virus that disproportionately effects people of color, and so to get true, meaningful results, we need their participation in these studies so that we know that the treatment is good for everybody, not just for one family or one particular racial group, that it’s good for everyone.”

To learn more about current trials and studies, head to the UW Health Study Finder website.

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