Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis of Prognosis Research (online)

The number of primary studies evaluating prognostic factors and models is rising per day. Alike for therapies and diagnostic tests, critically summarizing and analyzing the evidence form prognosis studies in a systematic review and meta analysis is beneficial for health care professionals seeking the best evidence.

Reviews of prognosis studies are much more challenging because of more variation in questions & designs, specific sources of bias & variation, and more complex statistical meta-analytical models. Several advances regarding the design, critical appraisal and statistical analysis in systematic reviews of prognosis studies, have recently been made. In this online medical course for researchers we discuss and practice how to define your review questions, how to search the literature, how to critically assess the methodological quality of primary prognosis studies, and which statistical methods to use for their synthesis. The course consists of plenary presentations, small-group discussions, and computer exercises.

By the end of the course, you’ll should be able to:

• explain the rationale for performing a systematic review of prognostic studies
• list the key steps of a systematic review of prognostic studies
• formulate a focused review question addressing a prognostic problem
• critically appraise the evidence from primary prognostic studies using the CHARMS instrument
• formulate the difficulties of meta-analysis of prognostic research
• understand, interpret and undertake systematic review and meta-analysis of prognostic studies

Our courses are aimed at clinical researchers, nurses, general practitioners, and other health professionals who want to improve their skills in epidemiology, statistics and (clinical) research.

3 weeks, 14 hours per week (online)

Even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. We offer personalized online learning with lots of interaction with peer students, the E-moderator and lecturers. Flexibility from students, a positive attitude towards teachers and peers and the willingness to learn together and help each other is invaluable to our courses. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log on several times per week.

Note that the starting dates of courses, interim deadlines, and dates of exams are fixed, but you can choose when and where you want to watch web lectures and work on assignments. The e-moderator of the course will inform you about the beginning of the course and about deadlines during the course.

The average required study workload for the courses of MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online is 14 hours per week. You will need this time to study, to keep up with the assignments and course material.