The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in the UK has released guidance to support sponsors, investigators, funders, and site research and development directors in their decisions to restart NIHR-supported clinical trials that were delayed or halted because of COVID-19.

To help sites, the NIHR has developed an NIHR Restart Implementation Group, which will monitor the progress and pace of trial restarts.

The guidance offers recommendations on how to prioritize research to determine whether a study should be restarted in this current phase of the pandemic. In the document, the NIHR provides a restart assessment checklist that includes requirements for a study’s viability, safety, capacity and site readiness.