C2E2 elevating research quality and patient care by asking the right questions.
The Centre for Clinical Epidemiology (C2E2) – one of the major research centres under Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) – officially launches its revamped website in January 2014. The new site offers better communication with the larger research community and highlights C2E2’s dedication to research, training, and knowledge translation that delivers the most effective health care to British Columbians.
“I see our work at C2E2 in a circular sense – we want to make sure that researchers are asking the right questions, then we want to make sure that policy and practice folks, and patients, are informing those questions,” explains C2E2 Director Dr. Stirling Bryan. “We want to ensure that when the research is being conducted, it is feeding back and that policy is being directed by that evidence as well.”
While the organization offers informative weekly rounds and an annual lecture series, C2E2 is most often methodology partner in clinical or policy-related research primarily for VGH and UBC researchers (but also for others across B.C. and Canada). Although researchers and investigators can partner with C2E2 at any point in their studies, Dr. Bryan notes that early collaboration is ideal.
“Coming to us with lots of data wanting help on the analysis side could be all for naught if the research wasn’t designed properly,” says Dr. Bryan. “Our whole purpose in many ways is to avoid that heart-sink moment — we want to work with people early and throughout the project to ensure that we end up with a high quality piece of research that’s going to respond, in a robust way, to the questions that people want answered.”
“At the end of the day it is predominantly the public’s money being spent on health research and we don’t want to be wasteful,” adds Dr. Bryan. “We don’t want to waste patients’ time or want to expose people to potential for harm. We want to make sure that when the patients are receiving health care, they have the best chance of a good outcome.”
Dr. Bryan hopes that through a refreshed website, C2E2 will continue to elevate clinical research, the benefits of which are reaped by patients, the provincial health economy, and investigators and researchers.
“Research success is not about quantity – it is about quality and impact,” he says. “Those are the main drivers for me and my colleagues; producing high quality, impactful research is where we want to be.”
