HEDS is part of the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. We undertake research, teaching, training and consultancy on all aspects of health related decision science, with a particular emphasis on health economics, HTA and evidence synthesis.

Wednesday 20 May 2020

HEDS website of the month for May - MetaInsight and MetaDTA


Every month we like to share a useful website or resource we have come across on our travels across the research web. This month we have a couple of really useful free-to-use online apps that have been developed for evidence synthesis by the Complex Review Support Unit (http://www.nihrcrsu.org/). 

These were initially aimed at non-statistical experts to assist with the conduct of the analysis required for systematic reviews, but we have had comments from statisticians that their user-friendliness makes them helpful tools for all.

The first is MetaInsight https://crsu.shinyapps.io/metainsight_continuous2/  which conducts network meta-analysis using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches.

Image of MetaInsight
MetaInsight



The second is MetaDTA 
https://crsu.shinyapps.io/dta_ma/ which conducts meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies.

Image of MetaDTA website
https://crsu.shinyapps.io/dta_ma/


Finally, a special version of MetaInsight – MetaInsight : COVID-19 has been released https://crsu.shinyapps.io/metainsightcovid/. This is a specially tailored version of the network meta-analysis app built around the trial evidence on pharmacological treatments for COVID-19. 
They are collecting the data from a pre-existing living systematic review https://covid-nma.com/ and their aim is to regularly update the data as trial results are made available. The intention of the app is to allow the interested user to dig deeper into the data and explore how changes to inclusion criteria and model choice etc impact on the findings. (There is not much data at present, but they anticipate this will change quickly)