WWARN workshops to help researchers build data management skills - and reap the benefits

The Workshops, entitled ‘Getting more from your malaria clinical trials data: Data standardisation and the WWARN Toolkit’, will explore the benefits of standardising data and the tools WWARN created to help researchers collect and curate high-quality data. The short sessions will run during the conferences hosted by the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria in Dakar, Senegal (15-20 April 2018), and possibly others. For more information or if you are interested in attending, see details below.

“We are trying to get more people to realise that they can do much more with their malaria clinical trials data than they may have otherwise considered, such as conduct analyses that can increase the local, regional and global impact of initial findings,” said Dr Clifford Banda, a TDR Clinical Research and Development Fellow at WWARN, who will co-facilitate the workshops.

The workshops will address different approaches to data standards and research outputs that can result from standardised data. They will also include in-depth discussion of available tools for researchers, including those from the WWARN Toolkit (which Dr Banda is in the process of updating), and solicit feedback on participants’ needs and priority areas of work.

“This is a great opportunity for researchers or data managers who might have less experience in data standardisation, but are interested in doing more. We would like to share our experiences so that others can learn from them and in turn tell us what they need,” said WWARN Senior Scientist, Dr Georgina Humphreys and co-facilitator of the workshops. 

The workshops are intended for early- to mid-career researchers and other clinical trial specialists who work, or are aiming to work, in malaria endemic countries. All participants must be registered at the corresponding conference to attend.