2014 drugis.org update

21 Jan 2015 — Gert van Valkenhoef

Most importantly, 2014 saw the start of development on ADDIS 2. We delivered three releases that aimed to prove the feasibility of our architecture and chosen technologies. At the same time we delivered features that set up the conceptual framework of ADDIS 2 and enabled focused discussions with potential users. We are now making progress on the data entry and data management component, for which we had to answer a number of difficult open questions regarding our data model and the version management of data sets. We also set up a software sub-team within work package 4 of IMI GetReal, which will help us prioritize features and gather feedback from project partners.

One of our master students, Bob Goeree, completed his Industrial Engineering and Management internship and MSc project with us. Bob worked on a prototype of a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) component for ADDIS 2, an early demo of which is available on cea.drugis.org. His MSc thesis extended that work to establish how network meta-analysis should inform such analyses. His thesis and internship report can be found on the publications page.

Gert van Valkenhoef spent October-December at the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Brown University. During this time, he worked with them on importing projects from their Systematic Review Data Repository into ADDIS 2. He also gave a number of talks, most notably at the Brown Biostatistics group and at ClinicalTrials.gov. Slides of these talks are available on the publications page.

Douwe Postmus is visiting the European Medicines Agency to work on the benefit-risk methodology project. This work includes providing guidance and training on reporting benefit-risk considerations and exploring different metholodogies for eliciting patient preferences. Douwe’s work will make use of our MCDA user interface.