Canada's search portal for clinical trials: How to use the portal

On this page

• To begin your search
• Option 1: Search by keyword, disease or condition
• Option 2: Choose trial status, province, territory or city
• Option 3: Search by date clinical trial was approved
• Search tips
• Your search results
  • How to download search results
• For more information

To begin your search

There are 3 ways you may begin your search for clinical trials on the Clinical Trials Search Portal. You may:

1. “Search by”: Enter a keyword, disease or condition
2. “Choose”: Choose a trial status, province or territory, or city
3. Search for clinical trials based on the date the clinical trial was approved

Figure 1 shows how these 3 options are laid out on the portal’s home page.

Option 1: Search by keyword, disease or condition

You may enter either:

• 1 or more search terms in the Keyword field
  • This field allows you to search all the content contained in the portal.
  • Adding 2 search terms gives search results where the terms appear together or individually.
  • Adding 2 terms to the Keyword field in quotation marks using “and” will give results where those terms appear close together in the same order. For example “safety and efficacy” gives different results than “efficacy and safety”.
• a search term in the Disease or condition field
  • As there can be more than 1 name for a disease or condition, it may help to do more than 1 search using different search terms.

Example using a keyword

You can perform a search using any word of interest. For example, you can enter a drug name, a sponsor name or a protocol code in the Keyword field.

A protocol code is a sequence of letters and numbers of varying length. Sponsors generate and use this as 1 of the identifiers for their clinical trial.

To use this search option for a protocol code:

• Enter the protocol code in the Keyword field (for example, ABC0123).
• Hit the Return key on your keyboard or hit the Search button on the web page.

The result should list 1 trial that the protocol code was assigned to and give some specific information about it. From this list, you may:

• select the title weblink to see the information for that trial that we have available in the portal or
• select the “Registry link” to visit the international registry or WHO ICTRP website (English only)

Note about information in the international registry: The registry weblink gives users quick access to all the information available for the record that we have matched to the Health Canada-approved trial.

Read the disclaimer notice about the limitations of relying on information from external sources as well as the matching process and use of artificial intelligence.  

Example using a disease or condition

You can perform a search using a known disease or condition:

• Enter the known disease or condition in the Disease or condition field, select the most relevant condition from the drop-down list and hit the Search button.
  • This field has an auto-fill feature. Terms that match what you are typing will appear for you to choose and click on.
  • Medical conditions that are found in the current portal data should be visible in the drop-down list as you begin typing.
  • Entering a term that is not in the drop-down list or not found in the portal data will normally return no search results or an error message.
  • The words you type in this field will be displayed under the field to make them visible even when you zoom in. This can help improve accessibility for people who use mobile devices to access the search portal and those who need to use a larger text size.

Option 2: Choose trial status, province, territory or city

This option lets you search by trial status, province, territory or city.

For this option:

• Choose a specific trial status by clicking the Trial status field and choosing an item from the list.
• Choose a specific province or territory by clicking the Province or territory field and choosing an item from the list.
• Enter the name of a city in the City field to refine your search.
  • As you start typing the name of a city, a list of cities will appear so you may choose the one that matches. If the city you are searching for does not appear, this means there are no clinical trials (active or completed) in that city.
  • If you notice that a city has more than 1 value on the drop-down list, it may be due to data entry errors from the external source data used for trial site locations. We are working to improve data quality over time.
• Hit the Search button.

Understanding trial status

The search portal may display a trial status for the clinical trial as a whole and also for the trial site (location). Note that if there is more than 1 site, the trial status may be different at some sites. For example, a trial may start recruiting participants and so the overall trial status is “Recruiting”, while the site status could be not yet recruiting or closed. Ideally, sponsors who register their clinical trial with an international registry will keep the trial status up to date for each site.

Some of the trials in the search portal are part of larger, multi-national clinical trials with sites in other countries. The portal displays only the Canadian site locations, which are currently identified by the sponsor in the registry. The sponsor may add or remove site locations during the trial. You may find information about sites operating in other countries by clicking on the registry weblink.

As status terms vary among registries, Health Canada maps each registry status term to a term used in the portal.

Many Canadian sponsors and investigators choose to register their trials in the United States ClinicalTrials.gov online database, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine. Table 1 shows how the ClinicalTrials.gov trial status terms are mapped to the status terms used in the Canadian search portal.

Visit the section on definitions for clinical trial status terms.

Option 3: Search by date clinical trial was approved

To search using this option, you may either:

• click on the calendar icons to choose the date range you are interested in or
• enter the year, month and day in the date of approval field or
• choose only 1 date, either the start or end date, to conduct a broader search
  • A start date will give you all clinical trials approved from a chosen date to present.
  • An end date will give you all clinical trials approved up to your chosen date.
• hit the Search button

Search tips

For a more refined search, you may use a combination of options 1, 2 and 3 when these combinations exist. For example, you may enter a known disease in the Disease or condition field and choose a city and a date range for when the clinical trials were approved.

There are 2 buttons that follow all 3 search options:

• The first button, called Search, runs the search based on your entered terms or dates. It takes you to a new page with your search results.
• The second button, called View all clinical trials, allows you to skip entering any terms or dates. It takes you to a new page with all the Canadian clinical trials that are available in the portal.

Searches in the Keyword field are not case-sensitive. The search portal does not recognize punctuation marks such as commas, colons, parentheses, brackets, hyphens or “wildcards”.

Leaving search fields empty will give you a wider search and more search results. The more search fields and filters you use, the fewer results you will get as the search gets more refined.

Your search results

You may refine your search on the Search results page (similar to Figure 2) by using filters provided on the right-hand side of the web page. These filters should display only the values that are available for the trials within the search results list.

For example, you may choose the:

• trial status
• trial phase
• clinical trials with results
• province when listed in the location information
• age category or sex of those who are eligible to participate
  • for more detailed eligibility criteria, refer to the information on the registry weblink

Scroll or navigate down and hit the “Apply filters” button.

How to download search results

You may download data extracts for the clinical trials found in your search results to a plain text table called a comma-separated-values (CSV) file.

There is also a link called “Accessing our data (API)” at the bottom of the search results page. This link allows you to download data extracts for every clinical trial that’s published on the search portal. Clicking on the link will take you to the Government of Canada’s open government portal.

For more information

Clinical trials in Canada must be conducted using good clinical practices. For example, a research ethics board must review and approve the trial’s protocol and clinical trial participants must give their informed consent. The International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) E6(R3) guideline on Good Clinical Practice (GCP) provides an international standard for designing, conducting and reporting clinical trials involving human participants.

Health Canada is an official member of the ICH and committed to the implementation of ICH guidelines.

We do not sponsor clinical trials, and the search portal is not used to recruit participants. If you have questions about a clinical trial or wish to take part, you should:

• speak with your own physician
• contact the clinical trial sponsor
• read the trial information and informed consent form
• ask questions about the clinical trial
• take the consent form home to think about the trial
• discuss it with your family and friends, if you wish to do so

If you have questions about a clinical trial you are taking part in, you should ask the trial physician or other contact person listed on the consent form.

If you have concerns about how a clinical trial is being carried out, you should contact either:

• the research ethics board that approved the clinical trial or
  • contact information should be on the informed consent form
• Health Canada by email at GCP_BPC@hc-sc.gc.ca or by phone at 1-800-267-9675

To report an error on the search portal or to ask questions about the search portal itself, email the clinical trial search portal team at ct.portal.team-equipe.portail.ec@hc-sc.gc.ca.