Welcome to the second newsletter for the Cochrane Statistical Methods Group
Issue 2 July 2024
Convenors
We have recently had a change of convenors and we sadly say goodbye to Anna Chaimani. We are very grateful to Anna for her contributions to the work of the SMG over the past few years.
We are delighted to welcome three new convenors to the group:
Theodoros Evrenoglou is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics within the Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center-University of Freiburg. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the Department of Mathematics at University of Ioannina in Greece and a PhD diploma in Biostatistics from Université Paris Cité (ex. Paris Descartes) in France. His main research interest lies in the development of statistical methods around pairwise and network meta-analysis. In the past he has developed innovative techniques for producing multiple treatment rankings and analyzing sparse data. Beyond his methodological contributions Theodoros is actively involved in several applied projects across various medical fields such as mental health, dermatology and infectious diseases. In his spare time Theodoros enjoys cooking with his spécialité being chicken curry!
Joseph Alvin Santos received his PhD from the University of New South Wales in 2022 and worked in the Biostatistics and Data Science Division at the George Institute for Global Health in Australia. He moved to the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland in 2023, where he transitioned into working on research methods around evidence synthesis, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses. His current research interests in evidence synthesis include the design and analysis of living systematic reviews and prospective meta-analyses with a Bayesian focus, investigations on the scope of use of Bayesian methods in meta-analysis in biomedical research and the application of Bayesian meta-analysis in pooling health state utility values, and examination of the consequences of including misspecified models for parallel-group cluster randomized trials and stepped wedge trials in meta-analysis. Joseph has a degree in nursing and practiced as a nurse for 3 years but is actually afraid of needles!
Lizzie Korevaar completed her PhD in 2023 and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Methods in Evidence Synthesis Unit at Monash University, Australia. Lizzie’s research focuses on the statistical methods for the design, analysis and meta-analysis of interrupted time series studies, and contributing to the development of tools to help with reporting of results from interrupted time series studies and to help peer-reviewers and editors detect issues in pairwise meta-analyses in systematic reviews. Lizzie has been the coordinator of the SMG since April 2021, and is also currently the co-chair of Statistical Society of Australia Mentoring Program Committee. Beyond biostatistics, Lizzie enjoys trying new things and activities; this year she’s had a go at making croissants, surfing, and frisbee golf, but her favourite new thing has been puppy yoga.
Revman Update
In September 2022, Cochrane endorsed the implementation of new statistical methods for random-effects meta-analysis. The implementation of these new random-effects methods is ongoing (started in January 2024), and we anticipate launching these features in RevMan by August 2024. The team has completed user-experience testing to confirm all changes in RevMan are user-friendly. Software development will commence next month.
Since the 2024 update of the Cochrane Intervention Handbook is planned for August 2024, we expect the corresponding chapter will provide information to authors about how to use these new methods. For more information about these methods, please visit our website: https://methods.cochrane.org/methods-cochrane/random-effects-meta-analysis-methods-intervention-reviews
Publications
We recently published a letter responding to an article describing a method for correcting the bias in the usual study weights in meta-analyses [1].
1. Simmonds M, Chaimani A, McKenzie J, Tudur-Smith C, Veroniki AA; Cochrane Statistical Methods Group co-convenors. Response to "A method was developed for correcting the bias in the usual study weights in meta-analyses" by Walter and Balakrishnan. J Clin Epidemiol. 2024 Apr 10:111357. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2024.111357. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38604272.
Webinar Series
Peter Godolphin from the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL delivered a Cochrane Learning Live webinar on estimating interactions and subgroup effects in aggregate data meta-analysis to identify who benefits most from treatments. A recording is available here.
Lizzie Korevaar and Simon Turner will present an Introduction to analysis and meta-analysis of interrupted time series studies with continuous outcomes on Tuesday 9 July 2024, 09:00 UTC. Register for the live event here. A full recording will be provided.
Areti-Angeliki Veroniki and Sofia Tsokani will present an Introduction to diagnostic test accuracy network meta-analysis on Wednesday, 20 November 2024, 14:00 UTC. Register for the live event here. A full recording will be provided.
Please do send us suggestions of presenters and topics for future learning live events.
Contact Us
Convenors:
Joanne McKenzie, Australia
Catrin Tudur Smith, UK
Mark Simmonds, UK
Areti Angeliki (Argie) Veroniki, Canada
Theodoros Evrenoglou, Germany
Joseph Alvin Santos, Switzerland
Lizzie Korevaar, Australia
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