Most research is co-ordinated by a central team of researchers at the study’s main Trial Office, and this will likely be a different team to who you completed your study with.

Their contact details should be on your Participant Information Leaflet given to you at the start of the study or on a newsletter if you have one. This team may be able to update you on the study’s progress.

Your study may also have a main website which will be updated about the study’s overall progress, including the end date, future plans and contact details.

Try searching for the name of your study on Google for example.

You can also find information about who funds your study (on the Participant Information Leaflet).

If your study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) you may find a summary once the study has ended across all sites on NIHR Evidence, which provides plain English summaries of study results.

You can also register to receive the NIHR Evidence monthly newsletter on their website and follow their account @NIHRevidence on X (formally Twitter).

Some studies in the NHS need to go through a process known as an ‘ethics review’ when it is looked at by an independent group of people before it is approved to protect your interests. These studies may then be approved by a national body called the Health Research Authority (HRA).

Studies that have been ‘HRA approved’ will be asked for an update on results one year after the overall study has closed (when all the data has been collected).

If you think your study went through this process, try typing the name of your study into the search box on the left side of the HRA’s research summaries webpage. Your study may appear with a summary of what the study found.

If you would like to have more information about the study results, you will find the contact details of the main study here also.

However, it is worth noting that there are often different sites running the same study and they need to wait for all data to be collected, so the study may close a while after you have finished your part.  

Most studies will be listed on a national research database as evidence that a research study is taking place. Two commonly used registers are:

• The International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry shares summaries of what the study found.

You can search for your study either by entering the specific ‘ISRCTN’ Identifier’ into search box (this can be found on your Participant Information Leaflet given to you at the start of the study) or by simply typing the name of your study into the search box. You may find updates on results about your study.

• The Clinical Trials website is a database which aims to have up to date information on clinical trials. It has information on current progress, study end dates and the summary of study findings if the study has ended.

Use the ‘find studies’ tab to learn how to search for your study.

Locally, in Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT), our library has created a database called the Oxford Health Research and Knowledge Archive (ORKA). This shows summaries of research that have been written by staff who work in OHFT who have ‘led’ the study.

If you think your study may fall under this, you can search for it by a number of filters such as ‘condition’, ‘service’, ‘setting’ and ‘author’ (the name of the research staff member on your Participant Information Sheet given to you at the start of the study).

It is worth noting that a lot of our studies do not have OHFT staff as authors, so your study may not appear here.

We also aim to show study results locally on OHFT’s Research and Development website, please visit:

• Oxford Health’s Research & Development Results Library webpage

• The NIHR Oxford Health Clinical Research Facility (CRF) website.

It is worth checking both pages as sometimes our research is supported by more than one team.

OHFT’s website sometimes shows local research stories on the news items tab.  You may wish to check this also by visiting Oxford Health’s Latest News.