St George's Hospital Medical School

Directory of randomisation software and services

This is a directory of randomisation software and services for clinical trials, including both simple do-it-yourself software and 24 hour telephone randomisation services. It is intended to help people planning and seeking funding for clinical trials.

If you know of other software or services which should be included, please email Martin Bland mbland@sghms.ac.uk and they will be added to the directory. If your service is listed here and you do not want it to be, please email Martin Bland and you will be removed.

This directory is partial. Exclusion from it does not imply that the service is inferior in any way, just tell us who you are and we will include you. Inclusion in it does not imply that the service has been approved by us. We take responsibility only for getting the links right.

Randomisation programs:

  • Clinstat is an old DOS program by Martin Bland, which is free. It is suitable for small scale trials. It does blocked and unblocked allocations and random sampling. Randomisation is found under main menu option 8. It prints simple lists of random allocations. For stratified randomisation, just print a blocked randomisation list separately for each stratum.
  • Randomization.com is a free on-line randomisation program. It randomises while you wait. It prints simple lists of random allocations.
  • EDGAR, Experimental Design Generator And Randomiser, is a free on-line randomisation program by James K. M. Brown (John Innes Centre). This is designed for agriculture, and does Latin squares and split plots as well as simple randomisation. It randomises while you wait. It prints lists of random allocations.
  • Stata is a commercial statistical analysis program. There is an add-on called "ralloc", written by P. Ryan, that does simple randomization, stratified randomization, blocked randomization or both. Stata is a great program for analysis, though you would not buy it just to randomise. In the UK, Stata is supplied by Timberlake Consultants.
  • EaSt 2000 is a commercial program for sequential trials, aimed at the pharmaceutical industry.
  • PARADIGM Registration-Randomisation Software is a web-based package produced by the Netherlands Cancer Institute and the UK Medical Research Council Cancer Trials Office. It is free and runs through your study interactively.

    • Randomisation services:

    These provide trial support services including telephone randomisation. These are not free. You must discuss your trial with the centre and agree their involvement before applying for your grant. These services are not cheap. 10 pounds per patient randomised is typical. They also provide many other collaborative services for trials. Some of these organisations have their origins in academic research, others are purely commercial. Telephone randomisation may be provided during normal working hours or 24 hours per day. You should check what service you need and what the service provider offers. You should also check what out-of-hours procedure they provide. This might be a voice activated computer, a person sitting by the phone, or a phone directed to someone doing something else.

  • Health Services Research Trial Support Unit, Dept of Health Sciences and Clinical Evaluation, University of York. This group works in collaboration with researchers on all aspects of trial design and analysis, including telephone randomisation.
  • Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit offers customised minimisation randomisation programs as well as a telephone service.
  • MRC/ICRF/BHF Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit, University of Oxford, carries out large-scale collaborative trials.
  • The Nottingham Clinical Research Group offer telephone randomisation and other statistical services.
  • The Northern and Yorkshire Clinical Trials and Research Unit (NYCTRU) at the University of Leeds offers a wide range of collaborative trial services.
  • Clinical Trials Research Unit (CTRU), Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand offers 24 hour randomisation.
  • The NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre of the University of Sydney, Australia, provides a randomisation service, available daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. (24 hours a day for acute cardiovascular trials).
  • Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) Duke University Medical Center, USA, offers Randomization: a 24-hour on-site, staffed randomization service with interactive voice response system technology and emergency unblinding.
  • Rho, Inc. Randomization Systems and Services offer an interactive voice response system for managing patient randomization during clinical trials, 24-hour.
  • Covance InterActive Trial Management Systems offers randomisation by an interactive voice response system, oriented towards the pharmaceutical industry.
  • The Sealed Envelope is a web-based on-line random allocation system.
  • ClinPhone provides a service oriented towards the pharmaceutical industry, offering data collection as well as randomisation by phone.
  • Clinical Data Care offers many trials services including telephone randomisation.
  • ASCOPHARM offer a variety of central randomisation systems for the pharmaceutical industry.

    • Thanks for the information to Jan Brogger, Tim Cole, Jon Cooke, Simon Coulton, Diana Elbourne, Steff Lewis, John C. Nash, Mark Nixon, and a couple of Google searches.

    This page was produced for applicants to the NHS South Eastern Regional R&D Project Grant Scheme.

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