Health and Social Care Evaluation
A key area of research is Health and Social Care Evaluation, which is performed by a specialist team of 7.5 FTE.
Health and Social Care Evaluation at Newcastle University
A key area of research is Health and Social Care Evaluation, which is performed by a specialist team of 7.5 FTE. During the REF assessment, we secured an impressive £23.4M in grant awards, including leading three strategic infrastructure grants for the:
- NIHR Innovation Observatory (£7.8M)
- NIHR Research Design Service (£5.1M)
- Cochrane Incontinence (£800k)
- as well as a range of large research grants including £4M from the Department of Health, £4.8M from the MRC and two NIHR i4i studies of £1M each
These grants supported 197 NU-authored outputs, with a field-weighted citation index of 1.65, a third of which were written with international collaborators.
We focus on four main areas:
- summarising knowledge
- developing method guidance
- Biostatistics development/guidance
- software and data to knowledge.
In summarising knowledge, the main achievements include:
1) we carried out extensive systematic reviews, network meta-analyses and modelling of the effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of surgical treatments for stress urinary incontinence in women, and distilled this information into the salient points. This summarised, high-quality data underpinned national NICE guidance.
2) We developed the ScanMedicine online platform, which uses AI methods to allow intuitive, simple searching of various medical data sources.
Our expertise in method guidance led to three key developments:
1) we created new synthesis methods to assess diagnostic tests where there was no existing gold standard
2) we used evidence synthesis to produce guidance on appropriate sample size numbers
3) we led the development of tools to incorporate economic evidence into Cochrane reviews.
Thirdly, our innovations in biostatistics development, guidance and software have been implemented into several trials including efficient multi-arm multi-stage trials designs implemented into multiple HTA trials, platform trials used in an international trial and CONSORT reporting guideline extensions including stepped wedge and adaptive designs.
Finally, we developed two innovations:
1) an online platform (DataSHIELD) to enable remote non-disclosive sharing of sensitive research data. This allows easy sharing of volume data, which improves collaboration between trial sites.
2) Our novel modelling methods informed PHE’s weekly reporting on excess deaths in England, and was awarded joint first place in the 2020 Analysis in Government Awards.