They conducted a methodological systematic review by searching the MEDLINE database via Ovid and screened 2121 phase 2 and 3 randomised trials published in the UK between 2000 and 2017. The students reviewed 308 eligible trials and assessed treatment success rates using several metrics to explore trends over time and across disease areas, as well as characterisation of the trials.
Three students (Catriona Miller, Emma Hammond and Sebastian Adu-Tei) were supervised by Danny Hind and Carla Girling on the topic of determinants of success of multicentre quality improvement collaboratives for which the students undertook a qualitative synthesis.
Laura Mandefield and Rebecca Simpson supervised two students, Peter McIlrath and Shivali Gadhia to investigate “What do stepped wedge trials look like?” For this project the two students combined 3 recent reviews into one large database which contained key information on each trial (eg setting, number of steps). This was part of a wider project with the medical statistics group on cluster trials and we aim to make the database available as a resource and report some of the results such as the use of Intra Class Correlations (ICCs) in stepped wedge trials.