Prof Declan Devane from the National University of Ireland, Galway (http://www.nuigalway.ie/our-research/people/nursing-and-midwifery/declandevane/) will be visiting the Unit on 22nd May to present at an Institute of Applied Health Sciences seminar, as well as to meet staff in the Unit to discuss present and future collaboration.
Declan is Professor of Midwifery is Director of the Health Research Board - Trials Methodology Research Network (https://www.hrb-tmrn.ie) and works with the HSRU’s Shaun Treweek, Katie Gillies, Heidi Gardner and Adel El Feky on Trial Forge (http://www.trialforge.org), an Aberdeen-led initiative that aims to improve the efficiency of randomised trials.
“Trials are often inefficient, sometimes very much so” says Professor Treweek. “A trial team may, for example, run a beautifully conducted trial that answers a question and picks an outcome that no-one except the researchers is interested in, which is the ultimate in inefficiency when you consider the limited resources available. Declan and his colleagues are absolutely on the same page as we are on the need to improve trial efficiency.”
Prof Devane’s talk will cover the development of core outcome sets for evaluating the effects of health care interventions and, in particular,the methodological implications of doing this. Anyone interested in evaluating the effects of health care interventions will learn something from the talk.
Finally, the Health Research Board - Trials Methodology Research Network that Declan leads has some really innovative projects, one of which is running a competition with primary schools to design and run their own trials. Have a look at this great 3-minute video about last year’s competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hyJ5Dp7R3g