NIHR Oxford BRC Statistics Hub Seminar: What's so great about RCTs?

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are experiments that help establish which interventions (medical, surgical or behavioural) are effective, safe and can improve healthcare. Why are RCTs considered to be the ‘gold standard’ design for comparing medical treatments? In this seminar, Ioana Marian, Senior Statistician at the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit, addressed the benefits of the random allocation of treatments, along with how to implement randomisation in practise. The importance of designing the study well and some of the common pitfalls to avoid were presented in this session. This was part of a series of lunchtime seminars organised by the NIHR Oxford BRC Statistics Hub.