Sunday, 25th November 2018
11am – 6.15pm (Registration starts at 10.30am)
Chakrabarti Lecture Theatre & JHB207,
John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Oxford OX3 0BP

“What does it mean to research through creative practice?”

Keynote Speaker: Dr Geof Hill (Birmingham City University)
www.bcu.ac.uk/research/-centres-of-excellence/centre-for-research-in-education/people/geof-hill

To have a look at the schedule and book your ticket, please visit: ars2018.eventbrite.co.uk

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Delegate/Attendance fee: £30 / Early Bird Tickets (£20) are available until 18th November – includes lunch & refreshments

We’ll be posting speaker information leading up to the event so keep an eye out for our Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/455606768180452

This event is supported by the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford City Council.

For a digital copy of the event booklet and more information please contact: info@ca-ru.org

We look forward to seeing you there!

CARU Conference Team
Follow us on social media: @CARUpage

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Professor Peter Friend and Dr David Nasralla from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences will discuss ‘Normothermic preservation – a new dawn or optimistic hyperbole?’

‘Making decisions and choices about health and social care need access to high-quality evidence from research. Systematic reviews provide this by both highlighting the quality of existing studies and by themselves providing a high-quality summary’.- Mike Clarke and Iain Chalmers [1]

Iain Chalmers, Carl Heneghan and Kamal Mahtani will talk about the history and development of systematic reviews, their current delivery and the shortcomings in current review production and the future directions of systematic reviews, including the launch of CEBM’s Evidence Synthesis Toolkit.

Sir Iain Chalmers: James Lind Library and Fellow of CEBM
Kamal Mahtani: Associate Professor and Director of the MSc in Systematic Reviews
Carl Heneghan: Professor of EBM and Director CEBM

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

[1] Clarke M, Chalmers I Reflections on the history of systematic reviews. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 2018;23:121-122.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Amir Ghaferi from the University Michigan in the USA, will discuss ‘Communication in Healthcare: A Failure in Need of Rescue?’

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds Lecture Series, Dr Regent Lee (Clinical Lecturer in Vascular Surgery and a Co-Principal Investigator of the OxAAA Study at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford) will discuss ‘Novel methods for predicting growth of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) in humans – an update from the OxAAA Study’.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at Oxford University, Dr Wilhelm Kueker, Consultant Neuroradiologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will discuss “Stent assisted coiling of broad based intracranial aneurysms”.

Robin Gorna, leader of the support team for the SheDecides movement; has over three decades of experinecer leading global and national health organisations. Author of “Vamps, Virgins & Victimes: How can women fight AIDS?”

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, Mr Puneet Plaha, a Consultant Neurosurgeon at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, will discuss ‘Brain tumour surgery – awake and novel imaging’.

‘Triboreacted materials as functional interfaces in internal combustion engines and medical implants’

Reducing CO2 and particulate emissions to halt global warming and improve the air cleanliness in developed and developing nations is urgent. A similarly large challenge is the provision of medical implants that will serve the ageing population. Both challenges are underpinned by the need to understand important functional interfaces.
This talk will focus on the engine and the hip and will present how an understanding of the interactions between tribology and chemistry/corrosion play a crucial role in the interfacial friction, wear and integrity. The integration of state-of-the-art surface science with engineering simulations in both of these areas enables engineers to create optimised systems with improved performance

Newspapers often feature studies that sound too good to be true and often they aren’t – they are myths.

Some myths may be harmless but the phenomenon affects most kinds of research within evidence-based science. The good news is that there’s a new movement tackling misleading and unreliable research and instead trying to give us results that we can trust.

Using his research in to human pheromones as an example, Tristram will discuss how and why popular myths, including power-posing, are created and how efforts have been made to address the ‘reproducibility crisis’.

Tristram Wyatt is an emeritus fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford and formerly Director of Studies in Biology at OUDCE. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He’s interested in how animals of all kinds use pheromones to communicate by smell. His Cambridge University Press book on pheromones and animal behaviour won the Royal Society of Biology’s prize for the Best Postgraduate Textbook in 2014. His TED talk on human pheromones has been viewed over a million times. His book Animal behaviour: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Open to all. The talk is designed for researchers from all disciplines and is open to the public.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Shafi Ahmed (Consultant Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgeon at the Royal London Hospital and Associate Dean at Barts and the London Medical School) and Ms Sarah Kessler (Producer of award-winning documentary The Checklist Effect and past Lead for Lifebox) will discuss ‘Innovations to improve outcome and patient safety in low and middle income countries’.

The 2019 Dementia Awareness Day will be held at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on the morning of Saturday March 2nd. The Oxford ARUK Network Centre organise this event to discuss current dementia research taking place within the network centre, which includes the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and University of Reading.

The event is open to the public and features several short talks from scientists on a range of topics in dementia.

We will also invite those who support people living with dementia and carers who will host information stands during the break. There will also be information on how you can get involved with dementia research.

Currently limited tools exist to accurately forecast the complex nature of disease spread across the globe. Dr Moritz Kraemer will talk about the dynamic global maps being built, at 5km resolution, to predict the invasion of new organisms under climate change conditions and continued unplanned urbanisation.

This book talk is co-organised with the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease

Vaccination raises ethical issues about the responsibilities of individuals, communities, and states in preventing serious and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. Such responsibilities are typically taken to be about minimising risks for those who are vaccinated and for those around them. However, there are other ethical considerations that matter when defining the responsibilities of different actors with regard to vaccination. Such ethical considerations are not often given due considerations in the debate on vaccination ethics and policy.

Thus, in this talk Dr Alberto Giubilini aims at offering a defence of compulsory vaccination taking into account not only the importance of preventing the harms of infectious diseases, but also the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the obligation to protect people from infectious diseases. He will offer a philosophical account of the key notions involved in the ethical debate on vaccination, of the types of responsibilities involved, of the possible types of vaccination policies ranked from the least to the most restrictive, and of the reasons why compulsory vaccination is, from an ethical point of view, the best policy available, as it is the most likely to guarantee not only protection from infectious diseases, but also a fair distribution of the burdens and responsibilities involved.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome

Seminar Series: Combined Medical-Surgical Grand Rounds
Title: ‘Gene therapy for retinitis pigmentosa’
Speaker: Professor Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
Hosts: Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and Nuffield Department of Medicine

For many good reasons, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, thematic analysis, and realist tales have become key tools within the qualitative researcher’s methodological toolkit. In this presentation, Dr Cassandra Phoenix invites the audience to consider the extent to which they may have (inadvertently) become the only tools within their toolkit.

Drawing on examples from across the social sciences, she considers how else we might collect, analyse and represent qualitative data within health research, asking what it means and involves to truly advance qualitative research methods in this field.

Dr Cassandra Phoenix is a Reader in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. Her research examines ageing, health and wellbeing from a critical/socio-cultural perspective. She has authored numerous publications on topics including the social and cultural dimensions of: physical activity in mid and later life; the lived experiences of chronic conditions (e.g. late onset visual impairment, vestibular disorders); and engagement with nature. Cassandra’s work is supported by a range of funders including ESRC, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, WHO and the NIHR.

This talk is being held as part of the Advanced Qualitative Research Methods course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

Please note this event will now take place on Thursday (instead of Wednesday).

Professor Carl Heneghan has extensive experience of working with the media. In this talk he will discuss some recent case examples, working with the BBC amongst others. This talk will discuss how using an evidence-based approach can help overcome the growing problem of fake news, and provide insights on how to work with the media to ensure your message is not distorted, and will discuss why academics should engage more with the media and the wider public.

Professor Carl Heneghan is Director of CEBM, and an NHS Urgent Care GP, and has been interested for over twenty years in how we can use evidence in real world practice.

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care module which is part of the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care and the MSc in EBHC Systematic Reviews. Members of the public are welcome to attend.

The first Surgical Grand Round of the Trinity term, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, will be held on Friday 3 May from 08:00 to 09:00 in Lecture Theatre 1, Academic Centre, John Radcliffe Hospital.

Please join us for a special screening of:
The discovery of the Epstein Barr Virus. A recorded interview of Denis Burkitt and Professor Tony Epstein in conversation

We are now live streaming the Surgical Grand Rounds!

Please visit: https://streaming.oxfordmi.uk/surgicalgrandround.html

Professor Dave Carter reveals how understanding intercellular communication could improve healthcare.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Dr Simon Buczacki (Academic Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge) will be discussing ‘Small intestinal neuro-endocrine tumours – surgery and science in Cambridge’.

As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, a panel of experts will discuss how artificial intelligence can be used to benefit patients and the challenges that it presents. The discussion will be chaired by Professor Lionel Tarassenko, world-leading expert in the application of signal processing to medical systems.

As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, Professor Ian Pavord will discuss emerging treatments for asthma, a condition that affects 5.4 million people in the UK. Professor Pavord is an internationally renowned researcher with a particular interest in asthma, chronic pulmonary disease and chronic cough.

As part of the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre’s Open Day, Dr David Eyre, an infectious diseases researcher and clinician, and Dr Katie Jeffery, Consultant in Microbiology at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will discuss how they used infection prevention and control best practice, whole genome sequencing and electronic patient data to halt an outbreak of a potentially deadly fungal pathogen at the John Radcliffe Hospital between 2015 and 2017.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences:

Dr Anita Makins will present ‘FGM: a global perspective’

Dr Katy Newell-Jones will present ‘Medicalisation of female genital cutting: decision making dilemmas and competing priorities’

Professor Chris Lavy will present ‘Building kids’ hospitals in Africa: the need, the realities and the rewards’

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Richard van Hillegersberg from University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands will discuss ‘Robotic minimally invasive oesophagectomy’.

In this lecture, lawyer Mary Bartkus shares her firsthand experience of the international litigation of multibillion dollar claims against Big Pharma when a medication taken by millions of users worldwide is withdrawn.

She will address the impact of the withdrawal and United States litigation on regulators, legislators, and on cross-border litigation in common law and civil law jurisdictions across six continents.

When Merck & Co., Inc. withdrew the innovative painkiller Vioxx (Rofecoxib) from more than eighty countries following evidence that high-dosage use could cause an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, thousands of US citizens brought personal injury claims.

A Texas jury awarded more than $250 million to one individual claimant. Although that verdict was reduced and later overturned on appeal, and most US juries found for the company, with more than 26,000 US court claims yet to be tried and another 14,100 waiting to be filed, the company agreed to resolve the US personal injury claims for $4.85 billion, a deal said to be “favourable” to the company and “clearly at the low end of general expectations”.

Internationally, claims were brought in waves following developments in the US. These international cases would be heard and decided in jurisdictions with different traditions and conditions for litigants.

In Australia, a justice of the Federal Court dismissed all claims against Merck & Co., Inc. in class litigation, finding “Merck had done everything that might reasonably be expected of it in the discharge of its duty of care”. The Full Court overturned an award of damages to the individual representative claimant for failure to establish causation, and awarded full costs to the company; the High Court denied claimants leave to appeal. Claims of remaining group members then were resolved.

In England, claimants abandoned multi-party actions filed in the High Court. In Scotland, the parties litigated and resolved individual actions. In Canada, the parties litigated and resolved overlapping class and individual actions in ten provinces. Courts regularly dismissed cases in civil law jurisdictions.

The lecture considers this landmark international litigation alongside the challenges companies face when investing billions of dollars to develop innovative medications, and asks: Who won and who lost?

Mary E. Bartkus is Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, a member of the Bars of New York and New Jersey; previously Executive Director & Senior Counsel, Merck & Co., Inc.

Under the leadership of the new Climax Chair of Clinical Therapeutics, Professor Duncan Richards, St Hilda’s College is establishing an innovative research centre aimed at addressing some of the key questions facing Clinical Therapeutics today.

We are launching this initiative on 11th June 2019, when Sir Michael Rawlins GBE, MD, FRCP, FMedSci , Chair of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, will deliver the centre’s inaugural lecture: ‘Novel approaches to assessing the safety and efficacy of new medicines’.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences:

Mr Ravish Jootun will present “Towards 0% 90-day Colorectal mortality: Accepting a low floor in the anastomotic leak rate plus safe rescue using an early warning integrated model”

Mr Will Perry will present “University of Auckland’s Global Surgery Group: the Republic of Vanuatu – a growing collaboration”