London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Skin disease is a leading cause of years lived with disability, yet the evidence base for informing treatment is poor. Dermatology clinical trials have rarely addressed questions that are important to patients and clinicians and the quality of reporting is poor. The UK Dermatology Clinical Trials Network (UKDCTN) was set up in 2002 to tackle these deficiencies by conducting high quality, independent trials on questions identified by a national community of dermatologists and methodologists and patients. The UKDCTN is a network that “belongs to the people” and has successfully delivered several national trials with the added benefit of bringing on UKDCTN fellows and trainees. This talk will retrace the origins and inspiration for the UKDCTN – the tough times and the good times, and will hopefully provide some ideas for others wishing to organise research on a national scale.

This event will be of interest to anyone interested in prioritising research, organising and teaching research

Information about speaker: Hywel is a dermatologist who trained in epidemiology at LSHTM. He joined the University of Nottingham in 1994 and built up the Centre of Evidence-Based Dermatology by founding the Cochrane Skin Group (which identifies key uncertainties in clinical dermatology) and the UK Dermatology Clinical Trials Network (which addresses those uncertainties through independent pragmatic clinical trials) and the knowledge management hub which spins out findings to a community of users. He cares passionately about independent research and is an advocate of genuine patient involvement in the practice of evidence-based dermatology. He has published around 500 peer-reviewed articles and is an NIHR Senior Investigator and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In January 2016, he became the new Director of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme.