COMORANT-UK

Consensus on methodological opportunities for routine data and trials.

Researchers are increasingly using routinely collected data to support data collection in trials. The availability of routine data for research has increased and infrastructure funding has enabled much of this. However challenges remain for data access, storage and sharing. Publications drawing from experienced researchers and limited case studies make reference to these and other ongoing challenges. However, the challenges as experienced and perceived by the wider community have not been systematically collected and reported.

COMORANT-UK (Consensus On Methodological Opportunities for Routine data and Trials) aimed to systematically identify these ongoing challenges, from the perspective of all relevant stakeholders in the UK. Through two surveys and one workshop, COMORANT-UK has ranked the most important methodological research questions.

A total of 66 respondents yielded over 260 questions or challenges for the use of routinely collected data in trials. These were thematically grouped and merged into a list of 40 unique questions, 88 stakeholders then selected their top ten from the list in the second survey. The top 14 questions were brought to the virtual consensus meeting in which stakeholders agreed a list of seven priority questions.

These questions address both evidence gaps (requiring further methodological research) and implementation gaps (requiring training and/or service re-organisation).

This study was reviewed and approved by Cardiff University’s School of Medicine Research Ethics committee [Ref: SMREC 21/99].

The study is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) National Institute for Health and Care Research (HIHR) Trials Methodology Research Partnership (TMRP) [Ref: TMRP/WG/15]