It
was great to get the project started - on the auspicious day of 1st April(!).
Although it is the beginning it has felt like quite a journey getting here. The
project was commissioned by the NIHR HTA programme back in Spring 2013 when
they advertised an outline of the question they wanted addressed and invited
proposals from researchers. But the HTA will have started exploring it as a
possible topic for commissioning research on well before then. If you are
interested in how HTA prioritises topics for research you can find out more
information by following the links on the HTA Programme website. Members of
the public, health care professionals and policy makers can make suggestions to
NIHR about any ideas they would like them to consider for funding. You can find details
of how they identify research questions and access the on line suggestion form
at http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/identifying-research.
The overall questions to be addressed by this research project are: what
orthotic devices are currently in use in the NHS for knee instability for
people with neuromuscular conditions, what are the costs involved and what
further research is needed. An important aspect of our work is to find out what
the most important issues are for patients. Our research project is intended as
preparatory work to inform a different piece of research sometime in the future
which will look at the clinical and cost-effectiveness of different types of
orthotic management of the knee in people with neuromuscular disease.
We are starting with the systematic review of previous evidence. However
we have also started planning the qualitative study of the views of orthotic
users as we will need to apply for research ethics approval before we can start
recruiting people to take part. We have also started planning exactly what we need
to ask healthcare professionals delivering orthotic services and how
we can make sure we get a good response rate to the survey. So please feel free
to tell anyone relevant about this blog and our research project and help us
build up a network.
Blogger:
Catriona McDaid
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