MRC Biostatistics Unit
Wednesday 25th June
This week sees the Cambridge Institute of Public Health (CIPH) Away Day at the University Arms Hotel, in central Cambridge. This is an open event to the public health/population sciences research community within CIPH member organisations, including research co-ordinators and PhD Students.
The Institute is a strategic partnership between the National Health Service (NHS), Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Cambridge’s School of Clinical Medicine, and there are a number of units and research groups under these different institutions.
The organisers at CIPH have put together a varied and lively programme of speakers with plenty of time for debate, which will bring alive the rich and diverse public health/population sciences research environment that the Institute fosters.
The Away Day programme will include:
Session One: Environment, Behaviour and Health
Chair: Theresa Marteau, Director, Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU)
Session Two: Patterns and Predictions
Chair: Paul Pharaoh, Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care (PHPC)
Session Three: Innovative Methodologies
Chair: Martin Roland, Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research (CCHSR)
Session Four: Improving Policy and Services
Chair: Nick Wareham, MRC Epidemiology Unit, Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR)
Two talks will kick off the day:
- Carol Brayne, CIPH Director, “Institute of Public Health: SharingSuccess”
- Julian Flowers, Acting Director at Eastern Region Public Health Observatory (ERPHO), “Public Health England: The future for health intelligence”
As one of the three Medical Research Units members of the CIPH, the MRC Biostatistics Unit (BSU) will contribute to this event. Adrian Mander, Programme Leader of the BSU Adaptive Clinical Trials research team will take part on the Innovative Methodologies session giving a talk entitled “The design and analysis of randomised trials”.
Summary: The MRC Biostatistics Unit is split into four themes: Evidence Synthesis to inform Health (ESH), Design and Analysis of Randomised Trials (DART), Statistical genomics (SGX) and Methods for the Analysis of Complex Observational and Longitudinal Data (COLD).
The focus of the talk will be on the recent advances in the novel design of clinical trials as part of the DART research theme. Innovation in trial design has been pushed by the spiralling costs of clinical trials, the smaller chances of success and a need to be more efficient due to difficulties in recruiting to trials. In particular the focus of the talk will be on adaptive designs. Adaptive designs allow planned modifications based on data accumulating within a study. Some novel trial designs will be described that show how they can be used to identify the maximum tolerated dose in dual-agent FTIH studies, how to find the right dose for early experimental studies, designing a multi-arm multi-stage design and a proposed design when considering biomarker-driven design for stratified medicine.
To learn more about the CIPH and its members’ research work please visit: