Very rapid insight generation to support UK health and care systems: An AHSN approach.

Introduction: COVID-19 challenges are well documented. Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) are a key partner to NHS and care organizations. In response to managing COVID-19 challenges, Wessex AHSN offered rapid insight generation and rapid evaluation to local NHS and care systems to capture learning during this period.

Assessing the complexity of interventions within systematic reviews: development, content and use of a new tool (iCAT_SR).

Background: Health interventions fall along a spectrum from simple to more complex. There is wide interest in methods for reviewing 'complex interventions', but few transparent approaches for assessing intervention complexity in systematic reviews. Such assessments may assist review authors in, for example, systematically describing interventions and developing logic models.

When and how to update systematic reviews: consensus and checklist.

Updating of systematic reviews is generally more efficient than starting all over again when new evidence emerges, but to date there has been no clear guidance on how to do this. This guidance helps authors of systematic reviews, commissioners, and editors decide when to update a systematic review, and then how to go about updating the review.

Researching Complex Interventions in Health: The State of the Art : Exeter, UK. 14-15 October 2015.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS K1 Researching complex interventions: the need for robust approaches Peter Craig K2 Complex intervention studies: an important step in developing knowledge for practice Ingalill Rahm-Hallberg K3 Public and patient involvement in research: what, why and how? Nicky Britten K4 Mixed methods in health service research – where do we go from here? Gunilla Borglin SPEAKER PRESENTATIONS S1 Exploring complexity in systematic reviews of complex interventions Gabriele Meyer, Sascha Köpke, Jane Noyes, Jackie Chandler S2 Can complex health interventions be optimised before moving to a definitive RCT? Strategies and methods currently in use Sara Levati S3 A systematic approach to develop theory based implementation interventions Anne Sales S4 Pilot studies and feasibility studies for complex interventions: an introduction Lehana Thabane, Lora Giangregorio S5 What can be done to pilot complex interventions? Nancy Feeley, Sylvie Cossette S6 Using feasibility and pilot trials to test alternative methodologies and methodological procedures prior to full scale trials Rod Taylor S7 A mixed methods feasibility study in practice Jacqueline Hill, David A Richards, Willem Kuyken S8 Non-standard experimental designs and preference designs Louise von Essen S9 Evaluation gone wild: using natural experimental approaches to evaluate complex interventions Andrew Williams S10 The stepped wedge cluster randomised trial: an opportunity to increase the quality of evaluations of service delivery and public policy interventions Karla Hemming, Richard Lilford, Alan Girling, Monica Taljaard S11 Adaptive designs in confirmatory clinical trials: opportunities in investigating complex interventions Munyaradzi Dimairo S12 Processes, contexts and outcomes in complex interventions, and the implications for evaluation Mark Petticrew S13 Processes, contexts and outcomes in complex interventions, and the implications for evaluation Janis Baird, Graham Moore S14 Qualitative evaluation alongside RCTs: what to consider to get relevant and valuable results Willem Odendaal, Salla Atkins, Elizabeth Lutge, Natalie Leon, Simon Lewin S15 Using economic evaluations to understand the value of complex interventions: when maximising health status is not sufficient Katherine Payne S16 How to arrive at an implementation plan Theo van Achterberg S17 Modelling process and outcomes in complex interventions Walter Sermeus S18 Systems modelling for improving health care Martin Pitt, Thomas Monks

Qualitative "trial-sibling" studies and "unrelated" qualitative studies contributed to complex intervention reviews.

Objective: To compare the contribution of "trial-sibling" and "unrelated" qualitative studies in complex intervention reviews.

Study Design And Setting: Researchers are using qualitative "trial-sibling" studies undertaken alongside trials to provide explanations to understand complex interventions. In the absence of qualitative "trial-sibling" studies, it is not known if qualitative studies "unrelated" to trials are helpful.

Current use was established and Cochrane guidance on selection of social theories for systematic reviews of complex interventions was developed.

Objective: To identify examples of how social theories are used in systematic reviews of complex interventions to inform production of Cochrane guidance.

Study Design And Setting: Secondary analysis of published/unpublished examples of theories of social phenomena for use in reviews of complex interventions identified through scoping searches, engagement with key authors and methodologists supplemented by snowballing and reference searching. Theories were classified (low-level, mid-range, grand).

Cochrane methods--twenty years experience in developing systematic review methods.

This year, The Cochrane Collaboration reached its 20th anniversary. It has played a pivotal role in the scientific development of systematic reviewing and in the development of review methods to synthesize research evidence, primarily from randomized trials, to answer questions about the effects of healthcare interventions. We introduce a series of articles, which form this special issue describing the development of systematic review methods within The Cochrane Collaboration.

The role of evidence, context, and facilitation in an implementation trial: implications for the development of the PARIHS framework.

Background: The case has been made for more and better theory-informed process evaluations within trials in an effort to facilitate insightful understandings of how interventions work. In this paper, we provide an explanation of implementation processes from one of the first national implementation research randomized controlled trials with embedded process evaluation conducted within acute care, and a proposed extension to the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) framework.

Methods: The PARIHS framework was prospectively applied to guide decisions about intervention design, data collection, and analysis processes in a trial focussed on reducing peri-operative fasting times.

A pragmatic cluster randomised trial evaluating three implementation interventions.

Background: Implementation research is concerned with bridging the gap between evidence and practice through the study of methods to promote the uptake of research into routine practice. Good quality evidence has been summarised into guideline recommendations to show that peri-operative fasting times could be considerably shorter than patients currently experience. The objective of this trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of three strategies for the implementation of recommendations about peri-operative fasting.