Invitation to contribute to a sandpit on primary care trials and analytics in the Farr Institute

Dear SAPC members

The Farr Institute executive has agreed to fund travel to a sandpit to develop collaborative research proposals on primary care trials and data analytics. It will comprise 20-30 participants drawn from Farr Institute Primary Care Working Group, and others with an interest in developing research proposals to make greater use of primary care data and EHR systems for clinical trials and observational studies.

You are being invited to express an interest in attending the meeting in Swansea before the International Population Data Linkage Conference on 23rd August 2016 from 0900-1700, co-hosted by the IPDLN,  the Farr Institute and the Administrative Data Research Network - we encourage you to register.

What we want from you
Reply to this invitation with a  half page idea for a potential project you would be willing to present to colleagues in order to seek collaborators, OR no specific project but a brief outline of your interests in collaborating in the area before 31st May.

The EPSRC Sandpit format takes several days but we plan to adhere to a similar process in the time available:

The process can be broken down into:

·         Defining the scope of the issue

·         Agreeing a common language and terminology amongst diverse backgrounds and disciplines.

·         Sharing understanding of the problem participants' expertise.

·         Using creative and innovative thinking techniques in break-out sessions to focus on a problem.

·         Turning Sandpit outputs into a research project

We expect the outcome of the day to be the creation of research teams to apply for funding. Targets include the MRC Methodology stream; the EU Horizon 2020: ICT Research & Innovation and Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing.

Best wishes

Brendan Delaney, Imperial.                                         Frank Sullivan, Toronto.