Members

Professor Paula Williamson

Paula Willamson

Paula Williamson is Professor of Biostatistics, and Lead for the COMET Initiative. Paula’s interests in improved outcome measurement and reporting spans over 20 years. She was Director of the MRC North West Hub for Trials Methodology Research (HTMR), 2008-2018, and Director of the Clinical Trials Research Centre (CTRC), 2005-2018. In these roles, Paula led research to raise awareness of the problem of outcome reporting bias, developed statistical methods to adjust for the problem, and subsequently developed core outcome sets in paediatric asthma and cleft palate for use in particular clinical trials. Paula co-founded and has led the COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) Initiative since 2010. Paula chairs the University of Liverpool’s Health and Biomedical Informatics Group, with an interest in promoting the uptake of COS in routine care and recording of core outcomes within the electronic health record for improved research efficiency.

Paula was appointed as an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2014, gave the Bradford Hill Lecture in 2017, and is current Chair of the MRC HTMR Network. She recently led a successful bid for a new MRC Trials Methodology Research Partnership from 2019. Paula was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018.

prw@liverpool.ac.uk


Dr Elizabeth Gargon

Elizabeth Gargon

Elizabeth Gargon (Liz) obtained a PhD in the Institute of Translational Medicine (Biostatistics) at the University of Liverpool. Liz is the Project Coordinator for the COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) Initiative. Liz conducts an annual systematic review of core outcome sets (COS) and maintains a database of COS).

Liz’s recent projects have involved working with external colleagues to understand, develop and test complex automated methods to help with the screening process involved in a systematic review of this nature. Liz has also recently explored the impact of design characteristics on response rates in Delphi surveys within COS development, as well as carrying out a retrospective assessment of COS minimum standards (COS-STAD) for cancer COS to provide a baseline of cancer COS standards.

Liz’s current projects include the redevelopment of the COMET website and database, the recent update of the systematic review of COS (including an assessment of minimum standards in COS published in 2018) as well as developing a protocol to assess the uptake of a COS.

e.gargon@liverpool.ac.uk


Dr Sarah Gorst

Sarah Gorst

Dr Sarah Gorst is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Liverpool. Sarah’s recent projects have involved identifying health areas where COS development is a priority, exploring how children and young people have been involved in the development of paediatric COS, reviewing the methods used to select measurement instruments for outcomes included in COS, and identifying more efficient approaches for incorporating patient perspectives within the early stages of COS development.

Sarah recently obtained a WELLCOME Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund award, which was used to develop a whiteboard animation video explaining what COS are in plain language terms. Sarah’s current projects include updating the annual systematic review of COS, developing a COS for pulmonary sarcoidosis, and exploring patients’ views on treatment targets and outcome measures to inform the development of a clinical trial for juvenile-onset systemic lupus erythematosus.

sgorst@liverpool.ac.uk


Professor Bridget Young

Bridget Young

Professor Bridget Young has worked at the University of Liverpool since 2004. Her research focuses on psychological and social processes in healthcare and in clinical research, with the overall goal of improving patient care. She specialises in the use of qualitative methods to investigate ways to improve treatments, services and clinical research processes. Her work includes a particular focus on stakeholder perspectives on clinical trials and core outcome set development, and on the issues affecting children with complex physical and mental healthcare needs and their families.

Bridget has co-chaired COMET’s People and Public Participation, Involvement and Engagement (PoPPIE) international working group since 2015. She is an invited panel member (Qualitative Methodologist) for the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research awards and senior advisor for NIHR, North West Research Design Service. From 2008 until 2018 she was also Co-lead of the Patient Perspectives Theme, MRC North West Hub for Trials Methodology Research.

byoung@liverpool.ac.uk


Dr Susanna Dodd

Susanna Dodd

Dr Susanna Dodd is a Lecturer in Biostatistics and has considerable experience in the field of outcomes research, including the development of a classification system for outcomes included in trials, systematic reviews and COS and involvement in the ORBIT project (Outcome Reporting Bias In Trials), helping to develop the study classification system for missing or incomplete outcome reporting in reports of randomised trials. Her current research relates to the link between core outcomes and routinely collected data in electronic health records, audits and quality assessments. Susanna is also involved in a project assessing the use of composite endpoints within COS, and a COS uptake project.

shinds@liverpool.ac.uk


Heather Bagley

Heather Bagley

Heather Bagley is the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Co-ordinator at the COMET Initiative.  Heather worked with a range of stakeholders to develop the PPI strategy for COMET and helped to establish the COMET People and Patient Participation Involvement and Engagement (PoPPIE) Working Group.  PoPPIE leads and oversees the public participation, involvement and engagement work of the COMET Initiative, developing resources for: core outcome set developers; patients and patient organisations.  Heather sits on the COMET Management Group and represents COMET on the International PPI Network development group.

Heather.Bagley@Liverpool.ac.uk


Dr Nicola Harman

Nicola Harman

Nicola Harman is a Research Associate in the Department of Biostatistics with a background in clinical trials. Nicola has been actively involved in the development of two core outcome sets, the first for otitis media with effusion in children with cleft palate (the MOMENT study) and the second for glucose lowering interventions for type 2 diabetes (the SCORE-IT study). Nicola has worked to support the active involvement of patients in developing core outcome sets and is interested in how best to engage with different stakeholders at all stages of COS development including recruitment, retention and dissemination of study results to a wide audience.  She is also interested in the translation of outcomes from pre-clinical studies to later phase trials and is currently working on the MOUSE project – Mapping OUtcomes measured in pre-clinical Studies against phase III/IV Effectiveness trials.

nharman@liverpool.ac.uk


Dr Adam Noble

Adam Noble

Adam Noble is a Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research. His work seeks to identify the psychological and social difficulties of those with neurological conditions and their families and translate these into high-quality care through the development and testing of interventions. To ensure the findings of any testing are as meaningful and useful as possible, one research interest is the development of core outcome sets (COS). So far, we have used systematic literature review, qualitative, and Delphi research techniques to develop a COS for cauda equina syndrome and completed work to lay the foundations for a COS for epilepsy.

anoble@liverpool.ac.uk


Richard Crew

Richard Crew

Richard Crew is a Digital Solutions Architect in the Department of Biostatistics. He is the lead developer of DelphiManager, a web based tool which facilitates and standardises Delphi surveys; predominantly for use in developing core outcome sets. Richard is also involved in looking at how this software can be used to improve the consensus process in general and the Delphi method in particular; again within the area of core outcome set development. He is currently also working with the OMERACT group to that end.              

quix21@liverpool.ac.uk


Keith Kennedy

Keith Kennedy

Keith Kennedy is a Senior Web Developer at the Department of Biostatistics. Keith is involved with the development and support of the Delphi Manager web application. In addition, Keith works on the development of web applications for clinical trials as part of his role.

kkennedy@liverpool.ac.uk