Have adaptive platform trials enabled updated faster research translation? A systematic review

Adaptive platform trials are an exciting innovation in trial design. They use master protocols to test multiple interventions at the same time and can modify the trial over time to find effective treatments more quickly than traditional RCTs. Living evidence syntheses are an innovation in evidence syntheses methods. They use continual surveillance to keep evidence syntheses, such as systematic reviews, always up to date. This study is part of a larger program of work, funded by an NHMRC Ideas Grant, that aims to understand whether and how these two methods can be integrated so that trials can reliably use external data to inform modifications, and evidence syntheses can be updated even faster. This project aims to describe how the findings from APTs have been used in systematic reviews and meta-analyses to date. The student will conduct a systematic literature review of studies that have used APT findings, using forward citation searching. It will characterise which APT findings have been most widely reported in systematic reviews and whether updates from APTs were used in living reviews. In doing so, this study will demonstrate and characterise the impact of APTs on research translation through evidence synthesis. The student will be based at the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University and will work closely with team experts in evidence synthesis and adaptive platform trials across Australia.