Training

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Aim

Our mission is to make evidence syntheses more usable in every sense of the word – better designed, conducted and reported, more useable for decision makers and more usable within health care policy and clinical practice decision making across the Island of Ireland and beyond.

Learning outcomes

Join us in this virtual meeting to:

• Meet colleagues in the evidence synthesis community from across Northern Ireland
• Hear about Evidence Synthesis Ireland’s training
• Learn about the latest call for Fellowships
• Get top tips on applying for Fellowships
• Let us know your training needs

Background

Emerging synthesis methods such as scoping reviews, mapping reviews and evidence and gap maps have been proposed as alternative synthesis approaches and are now a popular fixture within the research ecosystem. These ‘big picture’ reviews complement systematic reviews by responding to open-framed research questions and map the available evidence that decision-makers and researchers value.  Big picture reviews can examine how research is conducted on a certain topic or field, clarify concepts/definitions, identify research gaps, or links between concepts and characteristics in relation to a field thus improving clarity for those conducting research. This serves the research and policy-making community well as it allows for the identification of research gaps in an evidence-informed manner, allows for an assessment of the available literature, and often provides an interactive online table which can be publicly available. However, like the continually evolving methods for systematic reviews, big picture reviews are experiencing growing pains and there is a need for more education on differentiating between these review types and how to conduct and report them.

Aim

The aim of this workshop is for participants to have an appreciation of the value and role of big picture reviews within the evidence ecosystem.

Objectives

The objective of this workshop is to enable participants to understand the role, value and differences and challenges between big picture reviews and apply these to request for evidence synthesis services. The scoping review master class will enable participants to gain a deeper understanding on scoping reviews most challenges areas.

Learning outcomes

In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand the role and value big picture reviews have within the evidence ecosystem.
• Understand the differences between each big picture reviews.
• The challenges of conducting big picture reviews.
• An in-depth understanding of how to conduct scoping reviews

Dates: 5th September 2024

Time: 09:30 – 16:00

Places: 24 available for individuals who are resident in Ireland & Northern Ireland

Location: University of Galway

Prices: General €180; Student €70

Skill Level: Introductory

Target Audience:

This workshop will be beneficial to all those interested in big picture review, this includes healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision makers, librarians, information specialists, and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows and teaching faculty.

Facilitator:

Dr Danielle Pollock

Research Fellow, Health Evidence Synthesis, Recommendations and Impact, School of Public Health, The University of Adelaide

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In this webinar, Annie and Alecia will describe how they designed, recruited and supported a consumer / lived experience engagement approach for the Living Evidence for Australian Pregnancy and Postnatal care (LEAPP) guidelines. Together they operationalized what ‘diversity’ meant for these guidelines, and selected a 16-member Consumer Panel with a diversity of pregnancy and postnatal experiences, consumer representative experience and that reflects key demographic groups relevant to the guidelines. They will describe the practical steps they took to reduce the barriers to participation and create an inclusive and impactful consumer engagement approach.

Dr Annie Synnot is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, and the Consumer Engagement Lead for the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration and the Living Evidence for Australian Pregnancy and Postnatal care (LEAPP) guidelines. She researchers how consumers / people with lived experience can be partners in the production, dissemination and use of evidence, particularly living guidelines.

Alecia Staines founded Australia’s leading maternity consumer organisation, Maternity Consumer Network. She is involved with policy development at State and National level including national maternity strategy, Rural Maternity Taskforce, Queensland Birth Strategy, Medicare for Midwives and Publicly Funded Homebirth. She mentors other consumers to engage with their local maternity services and politicians to achieve access to better maternity services and achieve woman-centred care. She has 6 children she has birthed in a range of settings; hospital, birth centre and home.

Methods for qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) are now well established and decision makers are able to access rigorous QES on issues such as patient experiences of health conditions and interventions, and contextual factors influencing intervention implementation. QES often generate theories and explanations about why and how interventions work or do not work as anticipated. By integrating these theories with evidence on intervention effects in a mixed methods synthesis, review teams can offer vital information to support implementation of review findings in practice. However, the diversity of approaches for integrating QES and effectiveness syntheses can make it challenging for reviewers to understand how best to integrate.

This two day interactive workshop delivered by co-convenors of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group will introduce theory and practical examples of mixed methods synthesis. During group work participants will be encouraged to think reflectively on the strengths and limitations of diverse approaches. Each day will conclude with an open forum to reflect on the day’s activities and discuss issues relating to participants’ own review activity

By the end of this workshop participants will:

• understand why and when it is useful to do a mixed methods synthesis
• be able to recognise and appraise diverse approaches and tools for mixed methods synthesis
• describe challenges, and potential opportunities, for mixed methods synthesis
• have gained hands on experience of integrating different types of evidence
• apply lessons learnt to their own review activity

Dates: 25th & 26th September

Time: 09:30 – 17:00

Places: 25 available for individuals who are resident in Ireland & Northern Ireland

Pre-requisites: Prior experience of systematic reviews but not necessarily specific experience of qualitative evidence synthesis or mixed methods synthesis

Location: Galway Bay Hotel, Salthill, Co. Galway

Prices: General €250; Student €140

Target Audience: Systematic review authors, guideline developers, health and social care professionals, academics, researchers, postgraduate students, decision makers, Evidence Synthesis Ireland Fellows and other professionals

Facilitators:

Prof. Angela Harden, Professor of Health Sciences, School of Health and Psychological Sciences, Department of Health Services Research and Management, City University of London

Dr. Katy Sutcliffe, Associate Professor, Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordination Centre (EPPI Centre), University College London

Prof. James Thomas, Professor of Social Research & Policy, Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordination Centre (EPPI Centre), UCL Social Research Unit, University College London

This workshop  will be held over four mornings and provides authors, actively involved in conducting a systematic review, with confidence to assess a wide range of data types. It offers an insight into more complex methods of meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an overview on how to produce a summary of findings table for use in your review.

Date: 7th, 8th, 14th, 15th October 2024

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 20 places available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Fee: €150 General & €80 Student

Target audience

Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who are actively involved in performing a systematic review.

Prerequisites

Participants should at least have completed their review protocol, developed and conducted their search strategy and begun data extraction and analysis.

Background

Health care policy and practice decisions should be based on a synthesis of the global body of evidence rather than relying on individual studies. Cochrane Ireland and Evidence Synthesis Ireland promote evidence based healthcare policy and practice by supporting high quality, relevant systematic reviews and other synthesised research evidence.

Aim

This workshop provides authors, actively involved in conducting a systematic review, with confidence to assess a wide range of data types. It offers an insight into more complex methods of meta-analysis.

Learning outcomes

In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand how to identify, extract and analyse dichotomous and continuous data
• Understand more complex meta-analysis methods including use of Generic Inverse Variance Meta-analysis
• Understand principles of analysis of multi-arm trials, cluster and cross-over trial designs

Teaching strategies

This course consists of online workshops with of a mixture of short presentations, small group activities and practical demonstrations using Cochrane software (RevMan 5.4.1). In addition, participants will have access to Cochrane Interactive Learning modules and will be required to complete a set of modules prior to workshops. Access to the Cochrane Interactive Learning modules will be made available for4 weeks before and 4 weeks after the workshop and will be free of charge thanks to the support of Cochrane Training.

Facilitators

Prof. Valerie Smith, Professor of Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin

Dr Nuala Livingstone, Senior Quality Assurance Editor, Cochrane Editorial & Methods Department

Course content

• Data Collection overview
• Dichotomous Data: Extraction and Analysis
• Continuous Data: Extraction and Analysis
• Standardised Mean Difference
• Introduction to Heterogeneity – heterogeneity statistics, fixed and random effects models, dealing with heterogeneity
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Generic Inverse Variance Meta-analysis: overview
• Multiplicity Issues: Multi-arm trials, Cluster and Cross-over designs
• Practical demonstration in RevMan

*If your type of ticket is sold out, please join the waitlist or contact us at esi@universityofgalway.ie

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PRO EDI is an initiative led by Trial Forge, Evidence Synthesis Ireland and the Campbell Collaboration to try and make it easier for those doing systematic reviews, especially ones including randomised trials, to explicitly consider equity, diversity and inclusion in their reviews.  The initiative benefits from an international advisory group to help us make PRO EDI relevant to all reviews, wherever the reviewers may be based in the world, and whatever the topic of the review. In this webinar the development of the PRO EDI tool will be described and the tool itself introduced.

Speakers:

Prof. Shaun Treweek is a health services researcher interested in efficient trial design, particularly around inclusive recruitment and retention and the effective presentation of research evidence. He led the development of the NIHR INCLUDE Ethnicity Framework, a tool to help trialists design inclusive trials, PRO EDI, a tool to help systematic reviewers consider equity in their reviews, and PRECIS-2, a tool to match trial design decisions to what the users of the results need. He leads an initiative called Trial Forge (http://www.trialforge.org) that aims to be more systematic about how we identify, generate and use research evidence in making trial design, conduct, analysis and reporting decisions.  Finally, Shaun is an Editor-in-Chief of the journal Trials.

Clarinda Cerejo is a EUPATI-certified Patient Expert and a Stanford-certified Design Thinker. She serves as an India Ambassador for The Sumaira Foundation, a Board Member of the Global Patient Advocacy Coalition, and a Management Committee of the Rare Disease Research Network. She consults various organizations, including the World Health Organization, on patient/stakeholder outreach and engagement. As a Patient Contributor to the Pro-EDI project, Clarinda draws on her lived experience with a rare disease and various comorbidities, her professional background in science communication, and her geographic vantage point living in India to offer a well-rounded perspective. She cares deeply about patient engagement and co-hosts the podcast “Not Just Patients,” through which she aims to amplify the patient voice and break barriers to meaningful patient involvement in healthcare. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarinda-cerejo/

Ioanna Gkertso

This workshop will be held over four mornings and provides authors, at the beginning of the systematic review process, with an in-depth understanding of how reviews are planned and conducted. It offers an insight to the development of a protocol, introducing participants to methodology, search methods, data extraction, risk of bias assessment and meta-analysis.

Date: 4th, 5th, 11th & 12th November 2024

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00/1:30 pm

Places: 30 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Fee: General €150; Student €80

Skill level: Introductory

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: A basic knowledge of health research. Interested in learning more on the methods of a systematic review.

Teaching strategies: The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, led by members of the Cochrane Ireland & ESI teaching faculty covering each of the stages of developing a systematic review protocol, small group activities and plenary discussions, providing participants with the opportunity to develop and refine their protocol. This course will include blended learning with two months free access to Cochrane Interactive Learning self-directed modules, a number of which will be required study prior to the workshop.

Facilitators

Prof. Anne Matthews, Full Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing, Psychotherapy & Community Health, Dublin City University

Ciara Gleeson, Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist, Respiratory Assessment Unit, St. James’s Hospital, Dublin

*If your type of ticket is sold out, please join the waitlist or contact us at esi@universityofgalway.ie

Background

Health economics methods are employed to provide evidence on the cost effectiveness and budget impact of health technologies and health and social care interventions. This evidence forms part of the multidisciplinary health technology assessment (HTA) process in Ireland and internationally, which is central to informing resource allocation decision-making by policy makers and practitioners within and across health systems. Moreover, given the growth in applied health economic evaluation studies internationally, evidence synthesis methods are increasingly employed to critically appraise and synthesise the health economic evidence base.  To this end, there exists a need to educate relevant stakeholders on the conduct of evidence synthesis in the context of health economic evaluation.

Aim

This workshop aims to firstly, provide an introduction to the methods of health economic evaluation, and secondly, to provide guidance on the conduct of systematic reviews of health economic evaluation studies.

Objectives

The objective of this workshop is to equip participants with the knowledge and tools to conduct a systematic review of health economic evaluation evidence.

Learning outcomes

In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand the principles and steps of the methods of health economic evaluation
• Understand the principles and steps in conducting a systematic review of health economic evaluation evidence

Dates: 5th March 2025

Time: 09:30 – 14:00

Places: 24 available for individuals who are resident in Ireland & Northern Ireland

Location: Dublin

Prices: General €70; Student €50

Skill Level: Introductory

Target Audience:

Facilitators:

Paddy Gillespie, Professor of Health Economics, Health Economics and Policy Analysis Centre (HEPAC), University of Galway

Paul Carty, Senior Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Analyst, Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA

Programme

9.30am-11.00am: Lecture 1: Overview of Health Economic Evaluation Methods

11.30am-1.00pm: Lecture 2: Conducting Systematic Reviews of Health Economic Evaluation Studies

1.30pm-2.00pm: Participant Feedback Session: Guidance to Participants on Systematic Reviews of Health Economic Evaluation Projects