Have your data standardised and analysed
The WWARN data repository shows that the average time from enrolment of patients in a clinical efficacy study to the publication of results is 3.5 years. With the ongoing spread of antimalarial drug resistance, this delay is simply not tenable.
Rapid presentation of clinical trial results is required to ensure that policy makers and national malaria control programs have current information to make decisions on drug policies. Only if global and national treatment guidelines can be updated in a timely way, can measures be implemented to slow the spread of antimalarial drug resistance. The WWARN Clinical team offers a helpful service that could speed-up the availability of published and unpublished efficacy data, and the service is available to all malaria researchers.
When individual clinical records from drug efficacy trials are received by WWARN, the data are cleaned, transformed into a common format and analysed according to published Data Management and Statistical Analysis Plans. Collaborators rapidly receive a full report detailing the data management process and a second report summarising the results of their study with figures and tables. The WWARN automated system quickly detects data outliers and possible entry errors, and links these to an individual entry and date in the Data Management Report allowing researchers to quickly check source documents and correct data points before analysis.
The Clinical Analysis Report provides a trial profile, efficacy outcome tables and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis results classifying patients according to the WHO guidelines for the surveillance and analysis of antimalarial drug efficacy. All figures can be provided as image files for easy transfer to publications or other reports.
For groups without access to statistical support, the WWARN reports are a simple method of obtaining all results normally required in the reporting of antimalarial efficacy studies. For researchers with complete statistical support, the WWARN reports can provide a quick, reliable summary of the efficacy results while more complicated analysis is being undertaken by the researcher group.
The report can be used to share comparable data with other colleagues in their country or region, share their results with decision makers ahead of publication or prepare their results for a full publication of the study. This service is available to all malaria researchers and is designed to improve the accuracy of data processing and analysis, and to facilitate the timely publication and presentation of results.
“This resource is very beneficial to help clean and standardise data quickly and efficiently into tables and figures appropriate for many types of publications,” says Prof Hervé Menan, Department of Parasitology and Mycolgy, University Felix Houphouët Boigny. "A key advantage of this service is that fellow researchers can easily compare results with other studies from different areas, using different protocols and over time.”
“This is a useful service for research teams who may not have resources to produce standardised figures, tables and summarised results,” adds Clarissa Moreira, Senior Data Manager at WWARN.
WWARN standardised reports are currently available for clinical data, and will be available in the coming months for molecular and pharmacology data. Standardised reporting and analysis for in vitro data are currently available from the WWARN IVART tool.
If you would like to have your data analysed and standardised, or if you would like further information, contact the clinical team: clinical@wwarn.org
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