Developing and Testing Complex Healthcare Interventions (FutureLearn)

Learn how to design and deliver randomised controlled trials of healthcare interventions to maximise their effectiveness. The need for evolution in healthcare. Health systems, patient needs, and government priorities constantly change. It’s important that health services are constantly adapted and revised to meet these. When significant changes are made to service delivery it is vital that they improve patient care, represent value for money to the health system and are safe.

Enroll in course

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On this five-week course from the University of Bergen, you’ll learn why it is important to fully develop and test any new ideas for service delivery in health (complex interventions) before performing the final definitive trial.

Maximising the likelihood of success

Historically, significant amounts of research money have been wasted on trials of complex healthcare interventions that fail to recruit to target, fail to deliver the intervention effectively, fail to show an effect, or fail to transfer the findings into practice.

This course will guide you through the process of conducting a trial and disseminating your results to maximise your opportunity for success.

Exploring the development and evaluation of complex interventions

Complex interventions can be difficult to design, and ultimately test due to the number of interacting components.

This course, which is aimed at early career researchers, will guide you through the process from idea inception to the final randomised controlled trial, explaining the rationale behind each stage of the process.

Syllabus

Week 1: Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions

Week 2: Developing Your Intervention and Selecting Outcome Measures

Week 3: Feasibility Studies and Process Evaluation

Week 4: Randomised Controlled Trials - Part 1

Week 5: Randomised Controlled Trials - Part 2

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Describe the process for complex intervention evaluation and explain the rationale

- Describe how to design and develop a complex intervention

- Describe the role of behavioural and implementation science

- Develop a logic model to underpin a complex intervention

- Describe how to select the most appropriate outcome measures to evaluate a complex intervention

- Explain the benefits of involving patients and the public in health services research design and delivery

- Explain the rationale for undertaking a feasibility study

- Explain the purpose of process evaluation and how to undertake it

- Explain the purpose of the inclusion of Health Economics and Statistics

- Explain the rationale for undertaking a pilot study

- Describe how to conduct a randomised controlled trial

- Describe how to perform a process evaluation

- Describe how to effectively disseminate your study findings

- Explain the concept of a complex intervention
Who is the course for?

This course is designed for PhD students undertaking Health Services Research, specifically pharmacists and medical practitioners.