Check that the question hasn’t been answered before. It may seem strange, but a clinical research question has often been answered before, in another location, and sometimes a considerable time in the past. Finding similar research might help refine your question or reveal hints to overcome challenges in your research. Unnecessary duplication of clinical trials is not ethical.

• Test your idea with your colleagues, friends, mentor, supervisor and manager
• Seek support from people adept at systematic review, such as your health library services to explore how this trial will improve current services, but more importantly whether your question, your hypothesis has been answered before.
• How will answering this question improve health outcomes?
• Has your question been asked before in a clinical trial? Search clinical trial registries to make sure that your research question hasn’t already been asked by other researchers elsewhere.
• Has a systematic review or meta-analysis been done about your question(s)?
• Does your question and clinical trial align with your organisation’s priorities?

• Each Local Health District (LHD) has a library and their staff can support you and your team by providing services during the development phase of your study.
• Library services may include:
  – Identify existing systematic reviews on topic
• Recommend appropriate databases
• Review existing search strategies
• Execute searches across multiple databases
• Develop search strategies for each databases
• And through all these activities, helping to refine and develop a research question into a clear, focused hypothesis related to the topic of interest