Collaborative Research in Surgery

Collaborative research involves teams of healthcare professionals from different areas of expertise and/or students who come together to address a research question or audit. These groups can be found all over the world. These communities allow for better research, by combining the knowledge and effort of many towards a common goal. 

The scale of collaborative research can be global, as with the GlobalSurg-COVIDSurg collaboration that ran a study in 120 countries including more than 190000 patients. A dissemination committee was created to maximize impact on media and clinical guidance. 

The future challenges for collaborative networks are: (1) increasing the capacity for collaborative networks set up globally, particularly in LMICs, (2) sustainability in onfrastructure and funding and active involvement of students / juniors, (3) Working with patients in research co-development  (PPI), providing summaries / patient-oriented materials to empower patients to advocate for their care based on evidence, (4) performance of prioritization cycles to ensure maintained relevance (5) new study designs (adaptive trials, iterative protocols, economic evaluations) (6) data collection efficiency with new technologies, as well as maximization of data sharing and dataset combination.