Developing and Testing Complex Healthcare Interventions

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.

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.

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

• Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions
• Introduction to the Course
• Evaluation of Complex Interventions - An Overview
• Programme Theory
• Summary of Week 1
• Developing Your Intervention and Selecting Outcome Measures
• Introduction to Week 2
• Selecting the Most Appropriate Outcome Measures
• The Role of Theory and Implementation Science
• Using a Nominal Group Technique to facilitate target audience selection of intervention components
• Summary of Week 2
• Feasibility Studies and Process Evaluation
• Introduction to Week 3
• Feasibility Studies
• Process Evaluation
• Summary of Week 3
• Randomised Controlled Trials - Part 1
• Introduction to Week 4
• Medical Statistics and It’s Role in Clinical Trials
• Health Economics and It’s Role in Clinical Trials
• Management of Clinical Trials
• Summary of Week 4
• Randomised Controlled Trials - Part 2
• Introduction to Week 5
• Trial Protocol
• Dissemination
• Course Summary