Understanding factors associated with the translation of cardiovascular research: A multinational case study approach

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background: Funders of health research increasingly seek to understand how best to allocate resources in order to achieve maximum value from their funding. We built an international consortium and developed a multinational case study approach to assess benefits arising from health research. We used that to facilitate analysis of factors in the production of research that might be associated with translating research findings into wider impacts, and the complexities involved. Methods: We built on the Payback Framework and expanded its application through conducting co-ordinated case studies on the payback from cardiovascular and stroke research in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. We selected a stratified random sample of projects from leading medical research funders. We devised a series of innovative steps to: minimize the effect of researcher bias; rate the level of impacts identified in the case studies; and interrogate case study narratives to identify factors that correlated with achieving high or low levels of impact. Results: Twenty-nine detailed case studies produced many and diverse impacts. Over the 15 to 20 years examined, basic biomedical research has a greater impact than clinical research in terms of academic impacts such as knowledge production and research capacity building. Clinical research has greater levels of wider impact on health policies, practice, and generating health gains. There was no correlation between knowledge production and wider impacts. We identified various factors associated with high impact. Interaction between researchers and practitioners and the public is associated with achieving high academic impact and translation into wider impacts, as is basic research conducted with a clinical focus. Strategic thinking by clinical researchers, in terms of thinking through pathways by which research could potentially be translated into practice, is associated with high wider impact. Finally, we identified the complexity of factors behind research translation that can arise in a single case. Conclusions: We can systematically assess research impacts and use the findings to promote translation. Research funders can justify funding research of diverse types, but they should not assume academic impacts are proxies for wider impacts. They should encourage researchers to consider pathways towards impact and engage potential research users in research processes. © 2014 Wooding et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.RAND Europe and HERG, with subsequent funding from the NHFA, the HSFC and the CIHR. This research was also partially supported by the Policy Research Programme in the English Department of Health

Yes, research can inform health policy; but can we bridge the 'Do-Knowing It's Been Done' gap?

Copyright @ 2011 Hanney and Gonzalez.Provisional Abstract: This editorial introduces a new Supplement in Health Research Policy and Systems and highlighs the importance of assessing the impact of health research by examining whether we can move from 'Know-Do' to 'Do-Knowing It's Been Done'This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access publishing fund

Factorised steady states for multi-species mass transfer models

A general class of mass transport models with Q species of conserved mass is considered. The models are defined on a lattice with parallel discrete time update rules. For one-dimensional, totally asymmetric dynamics we derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the mass transfer dynamics under which the steady state factorises. We generalise the model to mass transfer on arbitrary lattices and present sufficient conditions for factorisation. In both cases, explicit results for random sequential update and continuous time limits are given.Comment: 11 page

Health research systems in change: the case of ‘Push the Pace’ in the National Institute for Health Research

Background Those running well-organised health research systems are likely to be alert for ways in which they might increase the quality of the services they provide and address any problems identified. This is important because the efficiency of the research system can have a major impact on how long it takes for new treatments to be developed and reach patients. This opinion piece reflects on the experience and learning of the United Kingdom-based National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) when it implemented continuous improvement activity to improve its processes. Discussion This paper describes the structure and work of the NIHR and why, despite is successes as a health research system and ongoing local continuous improvement, it believed in the value of an organisation-wide continuous improvement activity. It did this by implementing an approach called ‘Push the Pace’. Initially, the organisation focused on reducing the amount of time it took for research to transition from an early concept to evidence that changes lives. This scrutiny enabled the NIHR to realise further areas of improvement it could make – additional goals were increased transparency, process simplification, and improved customer and stakeholder experience. We discuss our experience of Push the Pace with reference to literature on continuous improvement. Conclusion Continuous improvement is a cycle, an activity that is done constantly and over time, rather than an act or linear activity (such as Push the Pace). We believe that the work of Push the Pace has initiated a strong commitment to a culture of continuous improvement in the NIHR. This is significant because culture change is widely recognised as immensely challenging, particularly in such a large and distributed organisation. However, our biggest challenge will be to enable all staff and stakeholders of the NIHR to participate in the continuous improvement cycle

Software for full-color 3D reconstruction of the biological tissues internal structure

A software for processing sets of full-color images of biological tissue histological sections is developed. We used histological sections obtained by the method of high-precision layer-by-layer grinding of frozen biological tissues. The software allows restoring the image of the tissue for an arbitrary cross-section of the tissue sample. Thus, our method is designed to create a full-color 3D reconstruction of the biological tissue structure. The resolution of 3D reconstruction is determined by the quality of the initial histological sections. The newly developed technology available to us provides a resolution of up to 5 - 10 {\mu}m in three dimensions.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Tracing the wider impacts of biomedical research: A literature search to develop a novel citation categorisation technique

There is an increasing need both to understand the translation of biomedical research into improved healthcare and to assess the range of wider impacts from health research such as improved health policies, health practices and healthcare. Conducting such assessments is complex and new methods are being sought. Our new approach involves several steps. First, we developed a qualitative citation analysis technique to apply to biomedical research in order to assess the contribution that individual papers made to further research. Second, using this method, we then proposed to trace the citations to the original research through a series of generations of citing papers. Third, we aimed eventually to assess the wider impacts of the various generations. This article describes our comprehensive literature search to inform the new technique. We searched various databases, specific bibliometrics journals and the bibliographies of key papers. After excluding irrelevant papers we reviewed those remaining for either general or specific details that could inform development of our new technique. Various characteristics of citations were identified that had been found to predict their importance to the citing paper including the citation’s location; number of citation occasions and whether the author(s) of the cited paper were named within the citing paper. We combined these objective characteristics with subjective approaches also identified from the literature search to develop a citation categorisation technique that would allow us to achieve the first of the steps above, i.e., being able routinely to assess the contribution that individual papers make to further research.Medical Research Council as part of the MRC-NIHR Methodology Research Programme, and Professor Martin Buxton

The impact of Cochrane Systematic Reviews : a mixed method evaluation of outputs from Cochrane Review Groups supported by the UK National Institute for Health Research

© 2014 Bunn et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: There has been a growing emphasis on evidence-informed decision making in health care. Systematic reviews, such as those produced by the Cochrane Collaboration, have been a key component of this movement. The UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Systematic Review Programme currently supports 20 Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs). The aim of this study was to identify the impacts of Cochrane reviews published by NIHR funded CRGs during the years 2007-11. Methods: We sent questionnaires to CRGs and review authors, interviewed guideline developers and used bibliometrics and documentary review to get an overview of CRG impact and to evaluate the impact of a sample of 60 Cochrane reviews. We used a framework with four categories (knowledge production, research targeting, informing policy development, and impact on practice/services). Results: A total of 1502 new and updated reviews were produced by the 20 NIHR funded CRGs between 2007-11. The clearest impacts were on policy with a total of 483 systematic reviews cited in 247 sets of guidance; 62 were international, 175 national (87 from the UK) and 10 local. Review authors and CRGs provided some examples of impact on practice or services, for example safer use of medication, the identification of new effective drugs or treatments and potential economic benefits through the reduction in the use of unproven or unnecessary procedures. However, such impacts are difficult to objectively document and the majority of reviewers were unsure if their review had produced specific impacts. Qualitative data suggested that Cochrane reviews often play an instrumental role in informing guidance although a poor fit with guideline scope or methods, reviews being out of date and a lack of communication between CRGs and guideline developers were barriers to their use. Conclusions: Health and economic impacts of research are generally difficult to measure. We found that to be the case with this evaluation. Impacts on knowledge production and clinical guidance were easier to identify and substantiate than those on clinical practice. Questions remain about how we define and measure impact and more work is needed to develop suitable methods for impact analysis.Peer reviewe

An Intron 7 Polymorphism in APP Affects the Age of Onset of Dementia in Down Syndrome

People with Down syndrome (DS) develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) with an early age of onset. A tetranucleotide repeat, attt5−8, in intron 7 of the amyloid precursor protein has been associated with the age of onset of AD in DS in a preliminary study. The authors examine the impact of this polymorphism in a larger cohort of individuals with DS. Adults with DS were genotyped for attt5−8 and APOE. The results were analysed with respect to the age of onset of dementia. The presence of three copies of the six-repeat allele resulted in onset of dementia seven years earlier than in the presence of other genotypes. Further study is essential to elucidate the mechanism by which this polymorphism functions, with an exciting opportunity to identify novel treatment targets relevant for people with DS and AD

What is the evidence on policies, interventions and tools for establishing and/or strengthening national health research systems and their effectiveness?

High-quality research is important for improving population health and well-being and for achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The challenges facing individuals, organizations and countries in securing research funding and building research capacity, and then using these resources effectively, have led to renewed interest in adopting a systems approach to national health research systems strengthening. This report found that health research strategies play a key role in combining the diverse interventions to strengthen specific health research system functions into an overall system. Good practices in research systems strengthening were identified as health ministry involvement in and sustained political commitment to the comprehensive research strategy, and, where appropriate, integration of the health research system into the wider health system. Policy considerations include actions to ensure a contextual analysis to inform a comprehensive strategy; stakeholder engagement, including in priority-setting; monitoring and evaluation tools focused on system objectives; and partnerships

Institutional strategies for capturing socio-economic impact of academic research

Evaluation of socio-economic impact is an emerging theme for publicly-funded academic research. Within this context the paper suggests that the concept of institutional research capital be expanded to include the capture and evaluation of socio-economic impact. Furthermore, it argues that understanding the typology of impacts and the tracking from research to impact will assist the formulation of institutional strategies for capturing socio-economic impact. A three-stage approach is proposed for capturing and planning activities to enhance the generation of high-quality impact. Stage one outlines the critical role of user engagement that facilitates the tracking of such impact. Stage two employs an analytical framework based on the criteria of ‘depth’ and ‘spread’ to evaluate impacts that have been identified. Stage three utilizes the outcomes of the framework to devise strategies, consisting of either further research (to increase depth) or more engagement (to increase spread) that will improve the generation of higher quality impact