Project Lead

Professor John Carlin

Professor Julie Simpson

COLLABORATIVE NETWORK

Clinical Trials Facilitation

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MACH PARTNERS

University of Melbourne

The committee ran multiple  symposia on complex trial design.

The first and second symposia, held November 2019, were on stepped wedged trials. This event was developed in conjunction with ViCBiostats and Monash Partners and was run over 3 days. We were fortunate to have international experts Prof Monica Taljaard, Senior Scientist, Clinical Epidemiology Program Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and Associate Professor, Epidemiology and Community Medicine University of Ottawa, and Prof Karla Hemming Institute of Applied Health Research, Senior Lecturer Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Birmingham present on each of the 3 days.  The first  2 days were more technical on the design, analysis and reporting, whilst day 3 was for policy makers  on evidence generation.

The third symposium held February 2020 was on SMART design and was presented by A/Prof Bibhas Chakraborty of Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. The sequential multiple-assignment randomised trials (SMART) is designed to follow the sequential decision making process prevalent in clinical practice.

Surveys completed at the conclusion of each symposia provide the following were the recurring comments that highlighted the best aspects:

  • Speakers were experts in their field, approachable, engaging and concise
  • The content presented was comprehensive, holistic and covered different perspectives whilst reaching similar conclusions across the different presenters
  • The practical component ensured hands-on interaction with the app was useful in consolidating knowledge learned