South West Research Hub Event Meeting

South West Research Hub event meeting 5th September 2019

The 2^nd South West Research Hub meeting was hosted by the Centre for Trials Research on Thursday 5^th September 2019 in Cardiff University’s Glamorgan Building. This year’s theme was Trial Methodology. There were around 60 delegates from across the South West region and G4 partnership, including The Centre for Trials Research (CTR), Bristol Randomised Trials Collaboration (BRTC), Clinical Trials and Evaluation Unit (CTEU) Bristol, Peninsula Clinical Trials Unit (PenCTU) Plymouth, Swansea Trials Unit and Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) / University of Exeter.

This is a relatively new event, with the first meeting hosted by Bristol last year. It aims to bring together trial methodologists and those with an interest in trials research to raise awareness of what’s going on across the trials units, share experiences, provide an opportunity to showcase current or recently completed research and to be a platform for more detailed discussion and engaging with colleagues across the region.

Delegates were mainly trial managers, senior trial managers, clinical trials coordinators, project managers, data managers and those involved in quality assurance and safety.

The Centre for Trials Research had a strong presence with many staff members giving talks and presenting posters.

Professor Kerry Hood, Director of the Centre for Trials Research, opened the morning session with a talk entitled ‘21^st Century Trials – Creating the future for RCTs’. This described potentially new techniques in study design and conduct.

Further presentations included a talk on ‘Pharmacovigilance in the CTR’ by Kelly Gee, Nagheen Ahmed and Anne White, a summary of the BARNARDS study by Becca Milton, Angela Casbard presented on ‘FAKTION: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase I/ II trial of an IMP in metastatic breast cancer’ and Rhys Williams-Thomas on his study within a trial (SWAT) that has been incorporated into the PACE HD and SenITA trials.

The keynote speaker was Professor Athene Lane, a Reader in Trials Research at the University of Bristol, who presented on establishing the evidence for randomised trial design and conduct.

Posters were presented during lunch. CTR posters comprised FLIGHT (Julie Pell and Paula Foscarini-Craggs), TRIDENT (Cheney Drew), ADVANCE (Jo Smith), SeNITA (Rhys Williams-Thomas), PriMUS (Beth Pell) and the PV & Safety team (Kelly Gee, Nagheen Ahmed and Anne White).

A competition for the best poster was judged by Professor Kerry Hood, who said there was an amazing array of posters and found it a challenging task to pick the best.

Afternoon session

Vicky Shepherd kicked off the afternoon session with a talk about ‘Consent models with vulnerable adults’ relating to her NIHR Doctoral fellowship. Then an update on PenCTU and a recent SWAT was given by Sarah Campbell.

CTEU Bristol gave two talks: ‘Introducing a web-based Investigational Medicinal Product management system: IMP-Track’ by Samantha de Jesus and ‘Dissemination strategies in the AIRWAYS-2 trial’ by Maddie Clout.

An update on Swansea Trials Unit was given by Professor Greg Fegan and a summary of the USTEKID trial was given by Dr Kym Thorne.

The last talk was by Gurmel Bhachu from Health and Care Research Wales on ‘Making training relevant and an update on research approvals’.

Final thoughts

The day ended with final thoughts from lead organiser, Dr Emma Thomas-Jones who felt that the day had covered a wide range of trial methodology innovations through all stages of the trial life cycle, including novel recruitment and data collection methods, innovative IMP tracking and wide-ranging dissemination activities.

The winner of the poster competition was announced, and in Kerry’s judgement when considering poster design, science and originality the overall winner was Dr Amanda Lewis from the BRTC with the poster entitled ‘Obtaining electronic routine resource use data directly from hospitals; experience from the UPSTREAM randomised controlled trial’.

Feedback from delegates on the day was positive, with comments stating that it was a well organised meeting with a nice mix of talks and posters and the methodology focus worked well. It was useful for sharing experiences across the breath of trials and showed the scale of work being done across the region. There were a great range of topics, new/ innovative techniques for trial management and it was interesting to learn about emerging methodology that trial methodologists can get involved with. Delegates said they would like the event to occur next year.

We would like to acknowledge the help and support from Judith Evans leading up to and during the event.

By  Cherry-Ann Waldron, Emma Thomas-Jones, Eleri Owen-Jones and Jo Euden on behalf of the CTR organising committee.