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Sapphire updates
With the launch of the new NHMRC grant management solution, Sapphire, are you keeping up to date?See the NHMRC Sapphire web page or follow @NHMRC_Sapphire on Twitter for regular updates about Sapphire including help, and hints and tips.
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Monday 9:00am - 1:00pmREDCap I: An introduction, Zoom in June
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The healing power of data
When you’re in a medical emergency, you don’t typically think of calling a statistician. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has shown just how necessary a clear understanding of data and modelling is to help prevent the spread of disease. See this Conversation story "The healing power of data: Florence Nightingale's true legacy"
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Designing chloroquine dosing regimens for COVID-19 clinical trials
See this 30 minute webinar #2 (29/4/2020) by Professors Ric Price (Menzies School of Health Research) and Julie Simpson (University of Melbourne).
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Monday 9:00am - 1:00pmREDCap II July: Beyond the basics
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Better cancer treatments from better data analysis
This article in the University of Melbourne's Pursuit explains how new approaches to collecting and analysing data can enhance cancer treatments for individuals and support better healthcare resource stewardship for everyone.
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NHMRC revised plan for 2020
For updates on NHMRC funding please see a list below as at 27th March 2020
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Looking for more training on REDCap? Free online videos
With courses filling fast there is also access to free online video training for REDCap! Have a look at the MCATS REDcap page and also the REDCap Consortium resources page.
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Tuesday 9:00am - 1:00pmREDCap I: an introduction November
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Monday 9:00am - 1:00pmREDCap II: Beyond the basics, November
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How can MCATS support your research?
See our 2 minute video of how MCATS has supported researchers. Learn about Departmental panel reviews and grant support.
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Want to quit a bad habit? Here's one way to compare treatments
MCATS Sabine Braat co-authors an interesting Conversation article this week.
MCATS can provide collaborative Biostatistics and Health Economics research support within departmental panel grant pitch reviews, research and grant development, analysis and publication. Contact us through the MCATS project form, and review our collaboration agreement.
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Research support
Access to researchers embedded within peer academic groups provides high standards of collaborative research support.
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Courses
Our program of courses and seminars covers study design, protocol development, REDCap and health economics.
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Research governance and ethics
There are a number of internationally recognised resources developed to support research.
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MCATS Research Journey
The MCATS Research Journey
Training timetable
Please use the MCATS project form as an expression of interest, and to provide us with your research project needs.
THE MCATS PROCESS IN 4 STEPS
- A query is submitted to MCATS manager using MCATS online contact form
- MCATS manager acknowledges receipt of enquiry and uploads into MCATS system
- MCATS academic contacts you to make a meeting. The first 1 ½ hour is free. This meeting will discuss the information provided and next steps
- Where further work is agreed to continue with MCATS (grant support, subscription) a collaboration agreement is signed to document scope, objectives and activities. This document also summarises the MCATS intent, processes and costs.
- mcats-info@unimelb.edu.au
- Postal Address
- c/o Melbourne Medical school, The University of Melbourne, Grattan Street, Victoria, 3010
The Melbourne Clinical and Translational Sciences (MCATS) research platform seeks to facilitate and collaborate to ensure resources are visible and mechanisms are in place for accessing the core research methods of Biostatistics, Health Economics or Health Informatics. These areas are a necessity for good research design and governance in order to generate research findings that lead to improved health care and informed health service reform.
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Biostatistics
Biostatistics underpins the sound application of statistical methods in clinical research.
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Health Economics
Economic evaluation is widely used to assess many new health care interventions and technologies.
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Health Informatics
Health informatics in the clinical and biomedical realm to aide in the optimal use of information. Includes REDCap.
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Research Quality and Integrity
Mutually beneficial relationships and resources allow the University and partners to work together, sharing resources and knowledge.
MCATS overview and testimonials
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I have a dataset I would like you to review, how do I prepare my data?
MCATS works collaboratively with SCC. A good summary can be found here
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I need to learn how to use REDCap
Free online REDCap training is available.
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Do you have a brochure?
The MCATS brochure can be found here
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If I pay for a service why would MCATS academics be on a publication?
MCATS is a collaborative research support platform where academics are funded for the work they provide. Aligning with academic collaborative principles, MCATS follows the University of Melbourne Authorship Policy (MPF1181) which states:
"5 Authorship. Introduction: The outcomes of research may be disseminated in a variety of ways but enduring forms, such as journal articles, are particularly important and to be an author for such a form is meritorious. To be named as an author, a researcher must have made a substantial scholarly contribution to the work and be able to take responsibility for at least that part of the work they contributed. Attribution of authorship depends to some extent on the discipline, but in all cases, authorship must be based on substantial contributions in a combination of:
- conception and design of the project
- analysis and interpretation of research data
- drafting significant parts of the work or critically revising it so as to contribute to the interpretation.
The right to authorship is not tied to position or profession and does not depend on whether the contribution was paid for or voluntary. It is not enough to have provided materials or routine technical support, or to have made the measurements on which the publication is based. Substantial intellectual involvement is required. A person who qualifies as an author must not be included or excluded as an author without their permission. This should be in writing, and include a brief description of their contribution to the work."
The NHMRC also has guidelines.
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Do I have a say in who I will work with at MCATS with my successful grant?
Yes. Lead researchers will always have a say in which statisticans / health economists will be involved in a successful grant application, in particular the analysis stage.
The statistician who is the CI or AI on the grant application will act in the role of CI or AI similar to any other CI and AI on the grant after the grant is successful. This means that the statistician on the successful grant will be the primary contact person for the duration of the grant and he/she may supervise another statistician within MCATS who will do the analysis.
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I am a researcher from the MMS, how do I access support?
The Melbourne Medical School (MMS) has invested in biostatistics support for two years Two new full-time MCATS staff members have been recruited for two years with the first commencing employment in May 2018, and the second starting in November 2018. Researchers with ideas or proposals that have been through departmental or peer review can enter their research information using the MCATS online portal.
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Why do I need to pay for this work?
In an 'ideal world' this platform would be part of University Infrastructure and fully funded to provide services (free) to University researchers.
However at this time, MCATS is partially funded through a University of Melbourne Chancellery fund called the Melbourne Collaborative Research Infrastructure Program. This funding source requires cost recovery with funds reinvested into the platform and the goal to have a fully sustained business unit that does not require University investment.
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What is the MCATS collaboration agreement?
The MCATS collaboration agreement is a plain english document that is pivotal to ensure all parties understand the process, needs, costs and expectations of the collaborative work. This in principle agreement is required by RIC and has been reviewed by the University lawyers for integrity.
- Professor Julie Simpson
Director of MCATS
Julie has over 20 years experience as a biostatistician contributing to clinical and population health research. Previously she has worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, Mahidol-Oxford Research Programme in Thailand, University of Aberdeen, and Cancer Council of Victoria. Her main research areas are: the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational cohorts. Julie is Head of the Biostatistics Unit, and Deputy Head of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and a NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Chief Investigator of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for Biostatistics.
- Professor Leonid Churilov
Biostatistics lead at Austin Hospital
Leonid is an internationally recognized expert in the use of health analytics and statistical modelling for decision support in clinical and health care systems. He is an Associate Editor of the “Operations Research for Health Care” and an Editorial Board member for four other journals. He contributes biostatistical, health analytics, and decision modelling expertise to several large international clinical trials and to a number of smaller pre-clinical, clinical, imaging, and service evaluation studies in the areas of general neurology, stroke, epilepsy, spinal cord injury, diabetes, gynaecology, and anaesthesia.
- Professor Nancy Devlin
Nancy is Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Centre of Health Policy, University of Melbourne. Her principal areas of research expertise are the measurement and valuation of patient reported health outcomes (PROs); the cost effectiveness thresholds used in making judgments about value for money in health care; priority setting in health care; production, performance and efficiency of hospitals; and the use of multi-criteria decision analysis in health care decision making.
- Associate Professor Douglas Iain Ross Boyle
Dougie is the Director of the Research Information Technology Unit (R2). Since 2006 Doug has been researching, developing and implementing systems for the ethical acquisition of record-linkable data for audit, research and health surveillance. Consent management, security and privacy-protecting record linkage are key components and research areas. The software systems (GRHANITE™) are now responsible for the largest collections of record-linkable primary care data ever accumulated in Australia. Prior to emigrating from Scotland in 2006, Doug worked in a similar capacity to develop and implement technologies for wide-scale data acquisition. His system SCI-DC Network is internationally recognised and is playing a continuing key role in the support of population-based diabetes health service provision across Scotland.
- Dr Tanara Vieira Sousa
Tanara is an MCATS Health Economist and Research Fellow at the Health Economics Unit from the Centre for Health Policy. She has completed her PhD in Economics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul/Brazil specialising in Health Economics. Tanara worked as a Researcher at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research/Brazil for ten years, where she gained experience in Monitoring and Evaluation of alcohol and drugs related interventions, design analysis and reporting of observational studies in alcohol, drugs and road safety.
- Ms Sabine Braat
Deputy head of MCATS biostatistics
Sabine completed her postgraduate training in Belgium (Master of Science in Biostatistics preceded by Master in Applied Mathematics) following undergraduate study in mathematics. She has over 15 years’ experience working as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands where she contributed to the design, analysis and reporting of clinical trials ranging from the early clinical phases (Phase II) to post-marketing (Phase IV) in a range of medical areas.
Dr An Duy Tran
An is a Senior Research Fellow at the Health Economics Unit of the Centre for Health Policy. Before joining the University of Melbourne in October 2016, he was a Post-doc Researcher and Assistant Professor in Health Technology Assessment at the Maastricht University and Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Dr Tran’s expertise includes design of economic evaluation studies, analyses of costs and health outcomes, and development of computer models to simulate the impact of treatment strategies on progression of chronic diseases and assess the cost-effectiveness of the therapies.
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- Dr Anurika de Silva
Anurika has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Statistics (Hons) from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her PhD involved the evaluation of multiple imputation methods for handling missing longitudinal data. She has worked in public health research for 2 years and her expertise is in the statistical analyses of randomised controlled trials and observational studies. She is also currently the course coordinator for the Master of Public Health course on Linear and Logistic Regression. Previously, she has worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Mr David Ormiston-Smith
David provides Health Informatics expertise to MCATS. David has experience with Natural Language Technologies (Python, web, data-mining, nlp) and supports REDCap users.
- Dr Karen Lamb
Karen has a BSc (Hons) in Statistics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a PhD in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland where her research focused on the mathematical and statistical modelling of pneumococcal carriage following vaccine intervention. Karen has been employed as a biostatistician in public health research for more than 10 years. She has previously worked at the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne and the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University in Melbourne. She has experience providing statistical support in the design, analysis and reporting of observational studies, quasi-experimental studies and randomised controlled trials.
- Ms Selina Cook
Selina has a Master in Applied Statistics in Macquarie University in Sydney, following undergraduate degree in finance minoring in statistics. She has previous worked as a research assistant and biostatistician for School of health and social development and Biostatistics Unit in Deakin University.
Ronelle Welton
Ronelle is the MCATS Manager. With her work within both research and industry focusing on implementation science (international public health programs), gives Ronelle a strong track record in health program design, monitoring and evaluation, project management and governance.