Canada’s search portal for clinical trials: About the portal

What is the portal

The Canadian Clinical Trial Search Portal replaces the 2013 Clinical Trials Database. The portal has information on clinical trials that Health Canada has approved involving human pharmaceutical, biologic and radiopharmaceutical drugs. “Approved” and “authorized” are both terms that mean that these trials have met our regulatory requirements.

If you’re a patient, you can find information about clinical trials that may be relevant to your medical condition, including where trials are taking place.

If you’re a researcher, health care provider or other stakeholder, you can:

find out how a clinical trial is progressing
download trials based on your search results
access summary results via weblinks to international registries

Search the clinical trial portal

Information contained in the portal

The portal is different from a registry as it doesn’t contain comprehensive information about each clinical trial. Instead, it contains select information about each clinical trial. A weblink takes users to an international registry where there’s more information that has been provided by the sponsor. This information could include what the sponsor hopes to learn by doing the trial, eligibility criteria for participants and summary results.

To populate the portal, we use automated technology that extracts information about clinical trials from 3 different sources:

our regulatory data management systems
international registries that follow World Health Organization (WHO) standards
WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP)

Health Canada’s portal has information about clinical trials for phases 1, 2 and 3 of drug development, conducted in patients and approved since April 1, 2013. This includes information on clinical trials that were listed in the former Clinical Trials Database from April 1, 2013, to July 29, 2026, when we launched the portal.

Initially, the portal will include information for trials that meet the same criteria as the trials on our former Clinical Trials Database. Some clinical trials that are reviewed by Health Canada are considered as phase 4 by an international registry, so this phase also appears in the portal.

You will be able to find information on clinical trials from our data management systems, such as:

treatment
protocol title
sponsor’s name
medical condition
sponsor’s protocol code
Health Canada control number
date of “no objection letter” (approval date)

This information comes from sponsors in their clinical trial applications.

You will also be able to find information on clinical trials taken from international registries or WHO’s ICTRP platform, such as:

trial status
trial phase
trial locations
contact details
completion date (estimated or actual)
title (short form)
weblink to registry
weblink to summary results
age and sex criteria (study population)
trial identification number assigned by registry

More detailed eligibility criteria may be found on the registry or by contacting the sponsor.

The portal is updated regularly with new information, such as recently approved clinical trials and changes in trial status, or other information coming from the registry.

The portal does not have information on:

comparative bioavailability studies
clinical trials designed as single patient trials
- also known as open label individual patient trials
trials considered by Health Canada as phase 4 clinical trials for drugs used within their approved conditions of use
- These trials do not require a clinical trial application and thus are not published in the portal.

We make every effort to ensure the information in the portal is up to date. Some information may be out of date for a number of reasons. For example, it may take some time for a registry to make updates. Or, a sponsor may not update their clinical trial record with the registry for some time.

Disclaimer about information in the portal

Some of the information in the clinical trials search portal comes from international registries. As well, the search portal will often display URLs to these registries so that users can find additional information about a clinical trial that we have approved.

However, the Government of Canada is not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of the information supplied by external sources. In some cases, there could be site locations in the registry data before the sponsor has notified Health Canada about them. Users wishing to rely upon this information should reach out to the sponsor or contact person for the clinical trial. Also, content provided by external sources is not subject to official languages, privacy and accessibility requirements.

Note: Health Canada does not sponsor clinical trials and the search portal is not used to recruit patients. If you want more information on clinical trials published on the search portal, you should speak with your health care provider and contact the clinical trial sponsor.

Use of artificial intelligence in the portal

Health Canada uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help populate certain information in the clinical trials portal, including matching trials to international registry records and translating shorter titles. This use supports efficient access to information while following Government of Canada guidance on using AI responsibly.

AI is only used for these operational purposes. It relies on publicly available data and does not replace official records or inform decision-making processes.

Most clinical trials that we have approved are matched using their protocol code to a record in an international registry. When that’s not possible, Health Canada uses the protocol title for matching, with the assistance of AI. At the time the portal was launched, about 17% of trials were matched using AI.

While the use of AI for matching purposes may give you immediate access to rich and detailed information, it can lead to information from international registries and registry weblinks that are not correct. If there’s a mismatch between the records, you may notice differences between the shorter title and the official protocol title. The official protocol title will always represent the trial that Health Canada approved.

AI is also used to translate the shorter titles that come from the international registry from English to French so they can be displayed in the portal. These shorter titles make it easier to view and scan search results in the portal, especially on mobile devices. Health Canada does not review these short titles or their translations.

We aim to reduce the errors that AI introduces in both matching and translation over time. Let us know if you would like to report errors in the portal information.

As a clinical trial sponsor, you can make it easier for us to find the registry record that correctly matches your Health Canada-approved trial. You can do this by:

making sure the protocol code (protocol number) in the registry Secondary IDs or Other Study ID Numbers fields is identical to the one in the clinical trial application filed with Health Canada
emailing the portal team if you find matching errors
- In the email, specify the protocol title, protocol code and Health Canada control number, along with the correct trial identification number assigned by the registry (for example, the NCT number or ISRCTN).

The email address for Health Canada’s clinical trial search portal team is ct.portal.team-equipe.portail.ec@hc-sc.gc.ca.

Refer to the section on definitions for terms used.

About clinical trial registries

Clinical trial registries are databases that contain information provided by sponsors about trials they are conducting. Some registries include summaries of results and can be accessed by interested parties, such as patients and health care providers.

The sponsor of the trial submits information to the registry platform. The registry’s administrators check the information to ensure it’s complete, work with the sponsor if there’s missing information and then publish the information in the registry. It’s up to the sponsor to keep the information up to date.

As not all sponsors register and report their summary results using registries, we describe policy expectations for both registration and summary results reporting in a guidance document.

Learn more:

This guidance also describes the types of registries we expect sponsors to use. These can be any international registry that complies with the clinical trial registry standards set by WHO. These registries provide public access and comprehensive information.

Learn about the WHO standards.

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2026-07-28

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