research tools

June 4, 2020: New Chapter in the Living Textbook Describes the Uses and How-tos of Patient-Reported Outcomes

Posted on by Karen Staman

A new chapter in the Living Textbook describes how patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are used in different settings and how to choose and integrate PRO measures into an embedded pragmatic clinical trial.

The chapter also characterizes PRO use within the PRISM program (Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain to Reduce Opioid Prescribing) of the NIH HEAL Initiative (Helping End Addiction Long-term Initiative). NIH Collaboratory Trials supported through the PRISM program include:

AcuOA: Pragmatic Trial of Acupuncture for Chronic Low Back Pain in Older Adults
FM TIPS: Fibromyalgia TENS in Physical Therapy Study
NOHARM: Non-pharmacological Options in Postoperative Hospital-Based and Rehabilitation Pain Management
OPTIMUM: Group-based mindfulness for patients with chronic low back pain in the primary care setting

The main topics of the chapter are:

The authors also include Core Outcome Sets for chronic pain, low back pain, musculoskeletal pain, and cancer.

May 19, 2020: New Updates to What is a Pragmatic Clinical Trial Chapter in the Living Textbook

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The NIH Collaboratory regularly refreshes content in the Living Textbook in order to offer a robust collection of resources to the wider research community about how to plan and implement a pragmatic clinical trial. We invite you to explore recent additions to the introductory chapter What Is a Pragmatic Clinical Trial?

Highlights include information on the broader embedded PCT (ePCT) ecosystem, an updated table describing the 19 NIH Collaboratory Trials, a new illustration of the PRECIS-2 continuum, webinars on how to start a PCT, and more.

“The Living Textbook reflects a collection of expert consensus regarding special considerations, standard approaches, and best practices in the design, conduct, and reporting of PCTs.” – Dr. Kevin Weinfurt, Editor-in-Chief of the Living Textbook

Sections in What is a Pragmatic Clinical Trial include:

  1. Why Are We Talking About Pragmatic Trials?
  2. The Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trial Ecosystem
  3. Differentiating Between RCTs, PCTs, and Quality Improvement Activities
  4. Pragmatic Elements: An Introduction to PRECIS-2
  5. Key Considerations for PCTs
  6. Additional Resources

May 4, 2020: TSOS Study Team Draws Lessons From Early COVID-19 Experiences in Washington State

Posted on by Damon Seils

Clinicians and researchers at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center documented their experiences in the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in King County, Washington. Their report offers lessons from clinical and research personnel, patients, and peer interventionists during the evolving pandemic response in an early US COVID-19 epicenter.

The article, published online in Psychiatry, presents a case series of experiences of frontline clinical and research teams in incorporating COVID-19 prevention strategies in the context of an ongoing comparative effectiveness trial of multidisciplinary, peer-integrated care coordination for patients with severe injury. The report also describes key themes from qualitative data collected during daily team meetings for the Trauma Survivors Outcomes and Support (TSOS) study, a pragmatic clinical trial also underway at Harborview. TSOS, an NIH Collaboratory Trial, is a stepped-wedge, cluster randomized pragmatic trial testing the delivery of screening and intervention strategies for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and comorbid conditions at 24 level I trauma centers in the United States.

The case series offers evidence that primary and secondary prevention strategies can be integrated into ongoing clinical and research interventions during pandemic response. Procedures can also be developed to support team members who are adapting to rapidly changing individual, organizational, and societal demands.

This work was supported in part by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). TSOS is supported within the NIH Collaboratory by a cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Mental Health and by the NIH Common Fund through a cooperative agreement from the Office of Strategic Coordination within the Office of the NIH Director.

For more news and resources related to the COVID-19 public health emergency, see the COVID-19 Resources page.

April 8, 2020: Start Planning Your ePCT With the New Quick Start Guide

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The Collaboratory is pleased to share a new resource with the clinical research community. The Quick Start Guide for Investigators is designed to help users navigate the steps of planning and launching an embedded pragmatic clinical trial (ePCT) in a real-world healthcare delivery setting. For each step, the guide highlights practical information found in the chapters of the Living Textbook.

Download  your copy of the Quick Start Guide for Investigators.

 

April 3, 2020: Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-COV-2 Infections Registry (INSPIRE): Participant-Centered, Rapidly-Deployed, Digitally-Enabled Research (Harlan Krumholz, MD; Bala Hota, MD, MPH; Graham Nichol, MD, MPH)

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Speakers

Harlan M. Krumholz, MD
Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine, Yale University
Director, Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation
Co-Founder Hugo Health

Bala Hota, MD, MPH
Professor of Internal Medicine, Rush University
Chief Analytics Officer, Rush University Medical Center

Graham Nichol, MD, MPH
Medic One Foundation Endowed Chair for Pre-hospital Emergency Care
Professor of Emergency Medicine
University of Washington

Other Panelists:

Jacqueline Rollin, Administrative Fellow
Rush University Medical Center

Wade Schulz, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine
Director, CORE Center for Computational Health

Matthew J. Thompson, MB, ChB, DPhil
Helen D. Cohen Endowed Professorship in Family Medicine
Professor of Global Health and Medicine, University of Washington

Deb R. Chromik, Participant Experience
Hugo Health

Dave Hutton, Product Lead
Hugo Health

Topic

Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-COV-2 Infections Registry (INSPIRE): Participant-Centered, Rapidly-Deployed, Digitally-Enabled Research

Keywords

Coronavirus; Virus pandemic; INSPIRE Registry; COVID-19 directed research program; SARS-COV-2; Longitudinal data; Hugo Health digital research platform

Key Points

  • In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, there is an urgent need for rapid knowledge generation and actionable insights. Evidence needed includes:
    • The number of cases, including milder ones
    • Risk factors and timing of transmission
    • Severity and attack rate
    • Risk factors for infection and severe outcomes, including death
    • Infectiousness timing and intensity
  • Patients must be considered part of the team; involved, engaged, and respected, with agency over their data.
  • To better understand the experience of people with COVID-19, Rush University Medical Center and Hugo health are piloting the COVID INSPIRE registry. INSPIRE is a rapidly-deployed, digitally-enabled, participant-centered platform to collect longitudinal data and facilitate observational and experimental studies.

Discussion Themes

Even with social distancing, the coronavirus is in a rapid escalation phase; this rapid pace has our attention.

People are interested in participating in research now more than ever. The call to action is to build a human-connected system that treats patients compassionately and supports patients in real time.

Are there existing systems that could be built on or adapted for COVID-19? Are there potential for linkages to other systems?

Tags
#pctGR, @Collaboratory1, @HMKYale, @BalaHota, @GrahamNichol

March 30, 2020: New Living Textbook Chapter Describes Ways to Monitor Intervention Fidelity and Adaptations During the Conduct of ePCTs

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

The new Monitoring Intervention Fidelity and Adaptations chapter of the Living Textbook was developed to introduce how to evaluate changes that may be encountered while conducting an embedded pragmatic clinical trial (ePCT). For example, a health system might experience competing clinical initiatives; turnover in leadership, clinicians, or staff; changes in technologies; new clinical practice guidelines; or regulatory changes.

The chapter offers strategies for study teams to anticipate, monitor, and document adaptations to the intervention in order to support study analysis and set the stage for dissemination and implementation of successful interventions in other healthcare settings. The chapter was developed by experts from the Collaboratory’s Health Care Systems Interactions Core, along with principal investigators conducting ePCT Demonstration Projects.

Topics include:

  • Anticipating changes that might impact intervention fidelity
  • Frameworks to assist in monitoring fidelity and adaptations
  • Strategies and case examples from the NIH Collaboratory Demonstration Projects
  • Pointers to additional resources

We encourage you to explore this new content.

 

March 24, 2020: Impacts of COVID-19 on the Conduct of Clinical Trials

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

In a recent PCT Grand Rounds, Drs. Naggie, Hernandez, and Perakslis of Duke University discussed the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on the conduct of clinical trials. The panel described the status of COVID-19, its impact on trials currently begin conducted, some key questions to consider, and potential solutions and approaches. A brief Q&A followed the presentation.

View the video and download the slides from the webinar.

Recent news announcements are available at NIH Announces Guidance for Clinical Trials Affected by COVID-19 Emergency and NIH Shares COVID-19 Guidance and Resources for Applicants and Recipients.

March 12, 2020: Transforming Our Understanding of How to Conduct Research in a Real-World Setting

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

In a recent video interview, Dr. Helene Langevin, director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the NIH, discusses the important work of the NIH Collaboratory in sharing knowledge and lessons learned as well as in harnessing expertise across the 19 Demonstration Projects it supports. “It is very important that we understand how research can be successfully implemented and tested in real-world clinical practice.”

 

 

For more interviews about the HEAL and PRISM projects, check out the February 21 news story.

January 13, 2020: National Library of Medicine Launches a Modernization of ClinicalTrials.gov

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

As the National Library of Medicine (NLM) celebrates 20 years of ClinicalTrials.gov, a new multi-year initiative is underway to modernize and enhance the user experience of this public resource. To that end, NLM is seeking actionable input through a Request for Information (RFI) and will hold an informational webinar for stakeholders as well as a public meeting:

  • Request for Information due March 14, 2020.
  • Webinar on the modernization effort for all stakeholders January 22, 3:30-4:00 pm ET. Register for the webinar.
  • Save the date for a public meeting planned for April 30, 2020, at the Natcher Conference Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

“ClinicalTrials.gov is the world’s largest public clinical research registry and results database, giving patients, families, health care providers, researchers, and others easy access to information on clinical studies relating to a wide range of diseases and conditions.” –NLM’s Musings from the Mezzanine blog.

December 6, 2019: Millions More People, Stronger Collaborations: The New and Improved NIH Collaboratory Distributed Research Network (Richard Platt, MD, Kevin Haynes, PharmD, Denise Boudreau, PhD, Jerry Gurwitz, MD, Christopher Granger, MD)

Posted on by Gina Uhlenbrauck

Speakers

Richard Platt, MD, MS
Professor and Chair
Harvard Medical School
Department of Population Medicine

Kevin Haynes, PharmD, MSCE
Principal Scientist
HealthCore

Denise Boudreau, PhD
Senior Scientific Investigator
Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Jerry H. Gurwitz, MD
Professor of Medicine, Family Medicine and Community Health, and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Executive Director, Meyers Primary Care Institute

Christopher B. Granger, MD
Professor of Medicine
Duke University

Topic

Millions More People, Stronger Collaborations: The New and Improved NIH Collaboratory Distributed Research Network

Keywords

Embedded clinical research; Distributed research network; Administrative claims data; Multisite research; Sentinel System; Electronic health data; National registries; Common data model; Curated research data

Key Points

  • The NIH Collaboratory Distributed Research Network (DRN) enables investigators funded by the NIH and other not-for-profit sponsors to collaborate with investigators based in health plans that participate in the FDA’s Sentinel System.
  • Examples from an array of real-world research studies highlight strengths of conducting collaborative research using the DRN.
  • Among the DRN’s attributes are the abilities to embed a randomized clinical trial in real-world clinical settings, to direct outreach to providers and patients/families, and to determine feasibility with high accuracy to allow confidence in planning of ambitious clinical trials.

Discussion Themes

The DRN is optimized for multicenter research and depends on partnerships. It was developed to enable productive research collaborations.

How do investigators who are not embedded in participating health systems learn to work effectively in the DRN?

Read more about the NIH Collaboratory’s DRN.

Tags
#pctGR, @Collaboratory1, @DeptPopMed, @HealthCoreRWE