Clinical metadata refers to the metadata used in clinical trials. Study data is the raw patient data collected during a trial. Metadata describes or provides information about the study data. It gives context to the data and provides a deeper understanding of the data. For example, dataset metadata provides context about the properties of a dataset, such as dataset name, label, and class. Variable metadata provides information about variable properties, such as format, type and controlled terminology.

Metadata is information that describes or explains the data collected during a clinical study. Metadata is often referred to as ‘data about data’. Clinical metadata management refers to the process of collecting, seeing, updating, cleaning, and managing clinical trial metadata.

A clinical metadata repository (also known as a clinical MDR) is a cloud based software tool to help data management professionals locate documents and data related to a clinical study. It’s a library for storing, sharing, managing and reusing standardized metadata assets, such as forms, datasets, terminologies and mappings. A clinical metadata repository is often referred to as a ‘single source of truth’ since it provides a centralized location for all relevant clinical trial metadata.

A clinical metadata repository is designed to provide a central location for stakeholders to find documents and data related to clinical studies. A clinical metadata repository – also known as a clinical MDR – is intended to improve the management of clinical metadata. Expected outcomes include increased data quality, greater consistency, faster data analysis, and earlier launch of new medicines to market.