medical research definition dictionary

Participating in Health Research Studies

What is health research.

• Is Health Research Safe?
• Is Health Research Right for Me?
• Types of Health Research

The term "health research," sometimes also called "medical research" or "clinical research," refers to research that is done to learn more about human health. Health research also aims to find better ways to prevent and treat disease. Health research is an important way to help improve the care and treatment of people worldwide.

Have you ever wondered how certain drugs can cure or help treat illness? For instance, you might have wondered how aspirin helps reduce pain. Well, health research begins with questions that have not been answered yet such as:

"Does a certain drug improve health?"

To gain more knowledge about illness and how the human body and mind work, volunteers can help researchers answer questions about health in studies of an illness. Studies might involve testing new drugs, vaccines, surgical procedures, or medical devices in clinical trials . For this reason, health research can involve known and unknown risks. To answer questions correctly, safely, and according to the best methods, researchers have detailed plans for the research and procedures that are part of any study. These procedures are called "protocols."

An example of a research protocol includes the process for determining participation in a study. A person might meet certain conditions, called "inclusion criteria," if they have the required characteristics for a study. A study on menopause may require participants to be female. On the other hand, a person might not be able to enroll in a study if they do not meet these criteria based on "exclusion criteria." A male may not be able to enroll in a study on menopause. These criteria are part of all research protocols. Study requirements are listed in the description of the study.

A Brief History

While a few studies of disease were done using a scientific approach as far back as the 14th Century, the era of modern health research started after World War II with early studies of antibiotics. Since then, health research and clinical trials have been essential for the development of more than 1,000 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs. These drugs help treat infections, manage long term or chronic illness, and prolong the life of patients with cancer and HIV.

Sound research demands a clear consent process. Public knowledge of the potential abuses of medical research arose after the severe misconduct of research in Germany during World War II. This resulted in rules to ensure that volunteers freely agree, or give "consent," to any study they are involved in. To give consent, one should have clear knowledge about the study process explained by study staff. Additional safeguards for volunteers were also written in the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki .

New rules and regulations to protect research volunteers and to eliminate ethical violations have also been put in to place after the Tuskegee trial . In this unfortunate study, African American patients with syphilis were denied known treatment so that researchers could study the history of the illness. With these added protections, health research has brought new drugs and treatments to patients worldwide. Thus, health research has found cures to many diseases and helped manage many others.

Why is Health Research Important?

The development of new medical treatments and cures would not happen without health research and the active role of research volunteers. Behind every discovery of a new medicine and treatment are thousands of people who were involved in health research. Thanks to the advances in medical care and public health, we now live on average 10 years longer than in the 1960's and 20 years longer than in the 1930's. Without research, many diseases that can now be treated would cripple people or result in early death. New drugs, new ways to treat old and new illnesses, and new ways to prevent diseases in people at risk of developing them, can only result from health research.

Before health research was a part of health care, doctors would choose medical treatments based on their best guesses, and they were often wrong. Now, health research takes the guesswork out. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that all new medicines are fully tested before doctors can prescribe them. Many things that we now take for granted are the result of medical studies that have been done in the past. For instance, blood pressure pills, vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, transplant surgery, and chemotherapy are all the result of research.

Medical research often seems much like standard medical care, but it has a distinct goal. Medical care is the way that your doctors treat your illness or injury. Its only purpose is to make you feel better and you receive direct benefits. On the other hand, medical research studies are done to learn about and to improve current treatments. We all benefit from the new knowledge that is gained in the form of new drugs, vaccines, medical devices (such as pacemakers) and surgeries. However, it is crucial to know that volunteers do not always receive any direct benefits from being in a study. It is not known if the treatment or drug being studied is better, the same, or even worse than what is now used. If this was known, there would be no need for any medical studies.

• Next: Is Health Research Safe? >>
• Last Updated: May 27, 2020 3:05 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/healthresearch

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Medical research articles from across Nature Portfolio

Medical research involves research in a wide range of fields, such as biology, chemistry, pharmacology and toxicology with the goal of developing new medicines or medical procedures or improving the application of those already available. It can be viewed as encompassing preclinical research (for example, in cellular systems and animal models) and clinical research (for example, clinical trials).

Functional precision medicine for pediatric cancers

A small, prospective clinical study shows that ex vivo drug screening of pediatric cancer samples can identify effective therapeutic options. If validated, these findings could herald a new approach to precision medicine in this setting.

• M. Emmy M. Dolman
• Paul G. Ekert

Blocking cell death limits lung damage and inflammation from influenza

Animals that receive an inhibitor of an antiviral cell-death response called necroptosis are less likely to die of influenza even at a late stage of infection. This has implications for the development of therapies for respiratory diseases.

• Nishma Gupta

Frequent jumps from human hosts

An analysis of publicly available viral genomes explores the evolutionary dynamics of host jumps and shows that humans are as much a source of viral spillover events to other animals as they are recipients.

• Christophe Dessimoz

Related Subjects

• Drug development
• Epidemiology
• Experimental models of disease
• Genetics research
• Outcomes research
• Paediatric research
• Preclinical research
• Stem-cell research
• Clinical trial design
• Translational research

Latest Research and Reviews

Donor regulatory T cells rapidly adapt to recipient tissues to control murine acute graft-versus-host disease

Graft-versus-Host disease is a major complication after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation and is ameliorated by adoptively transferred donor regulatory T cells. Here, the authors apply transcriptomic and TCR profiling to assess regulatory T cell organ-specific adaptation in murine bone marrow transplantation models.

• David J. Dittmar
• Franziska Pielmeier
• Michael Rehli

Empagliflozin in children with glycogen storage disease-associated inflammatory bowel disease: a prospective, single-arm, open-label clinical trial

• Xiaoyan Zhang

Molecular modelling studies and in vitro enzymatic assays identified A 4-(nitrobenzyl)guanidine derivative as inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro

• Kaio Maciel de Santiago-Silva
• Priscila Goes Camargo
• Marcelle de Lima Ferreira Bispo

Open access EEG dataset of repeated measurements from a single subject for microstate analysis

• Shuyong Jia
• Guangjun Wang

Combination therapies with ponatinib and asciminib in a preclinical model of chronic myeloid leukemia blast crisis with compound mutations

• Nikola Curik
• Adam Laznicka
• Katerina Machova Polakova

Prediction of hematologic toxicity in luminal type breast cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy using CT L1 level skeletal muscle index

• Pinxiu Wang
• Wenzhen Yuan

News and Comment

Busulfan plus cyclophosphamide vs. total body irradiation plus cyclophosphamide for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients with acute T lymphoblastic leukemia: a large-scale propensity score matching-based study

• Minyuan Liu

Safety and efficacy of a new academic CD19-directed CAR-T cell for refractory/relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and acute lymphoblastic leukemia in Brazil

• Camila D. Donadel
• Gil C. De Santis
• Diego V. Clé

CD56 expression predicts response to Daratumumab-based regimens

• Allen J. Robinette
• Laila Huric
• Francesca Cottini

Efficacy of eculizumab in transplantation-associated thrombotic microangiopathy: results of the French nationwide study on behalf of the SFGM-TC and the CNR-MAT

• Marion Peyre
• Flore Sicre de Fontbrune

Why diversity is needed at every level of clinical trials, from participants to leaders

Diversity in clinical trials must be accompanied by justice and equity, including benefits for underrepresented participants, in order to boost population health.

• Khadijah Breathett

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Institute of Medicine (US) Clinical Research Roundtable; Tunis S, Korn A, Ommaya A, editors. The Role of Purchasers and Payers in the Clinical Research Enterprise: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2002.

The Role of Purchasers and Payers in the Clinical Research Enterprise: Workshop Summary.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

Appendix V Definitions of Clinical Research and Components of the Enterprise

• DEFINITION OF CLINICAL RESEARCH

(Clinical Research: A National Call to Action, November 1999) Clinical research is a component of medical and health research intended to produce knowledge valuable for understanding human disease, preventing and treating illness, and promoting health. Clinical Research embraces a continuum of studies involving interactions with patients, diagnostic clinical materials or data, or populations in any of the following categories: (1) disease mechanisms (etiopathogenesis); (2) bi-directional integrative (translational) research; (3) clinical knowledge, detection, diagnosis and natural history of disease; (4) therapeutic interventions including development and clinical trials of drugs, biologics, devices, and instruments; (5) prevention (primary and secondary) and health promotion; (6) behavioral research; (7) health services research, including outcomes, and cost-effectiveness; (8) epidemiology; and (9) community-based and managed care-based trials.

• MAJOR COMPONENTS OF THE CLINICAL RESEARCH ENTERPRISE

Sponsors include private and public sector funding organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, biotechnology firms, universities, private foundations, and national societies. Within the public sector the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest clinical research sponsor, followed by the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Research Organizations

Research organizations include academic health centers, private research institutes, survey research organizations, federal government intramural research programs, and contract research organizations.

Investigators

Investigators are the scientists performing clinical research from varied disciplines with a range of academic qualifications (e.g., MD, Ph.D., RN, DDS, PharmD).

Participants

Participants are the human volunteers, medical information and biological materials of human origin, or data derived from volunteers. Participants may have particular health conditions or may be healthy volunteers or populations at large.

Oversight Entities

Oversight entities include Institutional Review Boards, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, National Committee for Quality Assurance, and other national regulatory agencies.

Stakeholders/Consumers

Stakeholders/Consumers include health insurers, managed care organizations, health care systems, organized medicine, voluntary health agencies, patient advocacy groups, purchasers of health care, and providers of health care, public health systems, and individual consumers.

• Cite this Page Institute of Medicine (US) Clinical Research Roundtable; Tunis S, Korn A, Ommaya A, editors. The Role of Purchasers and Payers in the Clinical Research Enterprise: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2002. Appendix V, Definitions of Clinical Research and Components of the Enterprise.
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What does medical research mean?

Definitions for medical research med·ical re·search, this dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word medical research ., wikipedia rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes.

Medical research

Biomedical research (or experimental medicine) encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called bench science or bench research), – involving fundamental scientific principles that may apply to a preclinical understanding – to clinical research, which involves studies of people who may be subjects in clinical trials. Within this spectrum is applied research, or translational research, conducted to expand knowledge in the field of medicine. Both clinical and preclinical research phases exist in the pharmaceutical industry's drug development pipelines, where the clinical phase is denoted by the term clinical trial. However, only part of the clinical or preclinical research is oriented towards a specific pharmaceutical purpose. The need for fundamental and mechanism-based understanding, diagnostics, medical devices, and non-pharmaceutical therapies means that pharmaceutical research is only a small part of medical research. The increased longevity of humans over the past century can be significantly attributed to advances resulting from medical research. Among the major benefits of medical research have been vaccines for measles and polio, insulin treatment for diabetes, classes of antibiotics for treating a host of maladies, medication for high blood pressure, improved treatments for AIDS, statins and other treatments for atherosclerosis, new surgical techniques such as microsurgery, and increasingly successful treatments for cancer. New, beneficial tests and treatments are expected as a result of the Human Genome Project. Many challenges remain, however, including the appearance of antibiotic resistance and the obesity epidemic. Most of the research in the field is pursued by biomedical scientists, but significant contributions are made by other type of biologists. Medical research on humans, has to strictly follow the medical ethics sanctioned in the Declaration of Helsinki and hospital review board where the research is conducted. In all cases, research ethics are expected.

Wikidata Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes

Biomedical research, in general simply known as medical research, is the basic research, applied research, or translational research conducted to aid and support the body of knowledge in the field of medicine. Medical research can be divided into two general categories: the evaluation of new treatments for both safety and efficacy in what are termed clinical trials, and all other research that contributes to the development of new treatments. The latter is termed preclinical research if its goal is specifically to elaborate knowledge for the development of new therapeutic strategies. A new paradigm to biomedical research is being termed translational research, which focuses on iterative feedback loops between the basic and clinical research domains to accelerate knowledge translation from the bedside to the bench, and back again. Medical research may involve doing research on public health, biochemistry, clinical research, microbiology, physiology, oncology, surgery and research on many other non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The increased longevity of humans over the past century can be significantly attributed to advances resulting from medical research. Among the major benefits have been vaccines for measles and polio, insulin treatment for diabetes, classes of antibiotics for treating a host of maladies, medication for high blood pressure, improved treatments for AIDS, statins and other treatments for atherosclerosis, new surgical techniques such as microsurgery, and increasingly successful treatments for cancer. New, beneficial tests and treatments are expected as a result of the Human Genome Project. Many challenges remain, however, including the appearance of antibiotic resistance and the obesity epidemic.

How to pronounce medical research?

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How to say medical research in sign language?

Chaldean Numerology

The numerical value of medical research in Chaldean Numerology is: 2

Pythagorean Numerology

The numerical value of medical research in Pythagorean Numerology is: 7

Examples of medical research in a Sentence

Huseyin Naci :

According to our previous research, there is a bias against testing exercise, medical research increasingly favors drug interventions over strategies to modify lifestyle.

Senate Committee on Commerce :

Sharks and the scientists who study them have led us innovations in improvements in aerodynamics, renewable energy, electrical sensors, and health and medical research . Innovative shark research can benefit marine ecosystems and continue to raise public awareness about these important species.

Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro :

Pfizer built their business on the back of our research and development tax incentives, our federally supported medical research , our skilled workforce, and our infrastructure, we cannot continue to allow Pfizer and other corporations to pretend that they are American while reaping the benefits this country has to offer, yet claiming to be another nationality when the tax bill comes.

Francis Collins :

I have done everything I can to stay out of any kind of political, partisan debates because it is really not a place where medical research belongs, i was not going to compromise scientific principles to just hold onto the job.

Bill Evanina :

Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America's response to the COVID19 pandemic.

• ^  Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Research
• ^  Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?search=medical research

Translations for medical research

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• بحث طبى Arabic

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