The „Re­se­arch Se­mi­nar Se­ries“ held by the WU's Mar­ke­ting De­part­ment helps to con­nect our Fa­cul­ty with in­ter­na­tio­nal scholars from the Mar­ke­ting field. They are in­vi­ted to pre­sent their la­test re­se­arch and dis­cuss the cur­rent trends and de­ve­lo­p­ments in all major areas of mar­ke­ting. The se­mi­nar is open to all WU fa­cul­ties and stu­dents.

Talk by Gui Li­be­ra­li, Eras­mus Uni­ver­si­ty Rot­ter­dam (NL)

Title: “Mor­phing Ran­do­mi­zed Con­trol­led Tri­als”

Abs­tract: In­crea­sin­gly, large drug tri­als are under pres­su­re to re­du­ce their length and cost while also re­du­cing po­ten­ti­al harm to pa­ti­ents. The COVID-​19 pan­de­mic made the ba­lan­ce bet­ween speed of new drug de­ve­lo­p­ment and sta­tis­ti­cal ro­bust­ness in tri­als ever more re­le­vant. Ef­fi­ci­ent ex­pe­ri­men­tal de­signs of tri­als of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs can re­du­ce the pres­su­re on health re­se­arch fun­ding and mi­ni­mi­ze pa­ti­ent harm be­cau­se they re­qui­re smal­ler samp­les than ran­do­mi­zed con­trol­led tri­als (RCT).  Based on past re­se­arch on web­site mor­phing and ad­ap­ti­ve on­line ad­ver­ti­sing, we pro­po­se a novel me­thod that uses in­te­rim in­for­ma­ti­on to adapt cli­ni­cal tri­als in real time,  ba­lan­cing the trade-​off bet­ween ‘drug dis­co­very’ and ‘pa­ti­ent re­co­very’.  We eva­lua­te our me­thod by ana­ly­zing large-​scale ran­do­mi­zed con­trol­led tri­als of a new tre­at­ment for myo­car­di­al in­farc­tion. The trial in­clu­ded 41,021 pa­ti­ents in 15 coun­tries and 1,081 hos­pi­tals. Our me­thod si­gni­fi­cant­ly out­per­forms tra­di­tio­nal RCTs by re­du­cing mor­ta­li­ty at the re­qui­red level of sta­tis­ti­cal power on the op­ti­mal tre­at­ment. We found that the use of our MAB would have in­crea­sed pa­ti­ent be­ne­ficence by re­li­a­bly iden­ti­fy­ing the best tre­at­ment, while sa­ving lives and pre­ven­ting car­dio­va­s­cu­lar events du­ring the trial by re­du­cing pa­ti­ent ex­po­sure to un­fa­vor­able tre­at­ments. We also pre­sent the ap­p­li­ca­ti­on of our me­thod to a out-​patient se­cond large-​scale trial. We close with a dis­cus­sion of im­pli­ca­ti­ons for mar­ke­ting pro­blems that now rely on RCTs.

For all dates of the up­co­ming Mar­ke­ting Re­se­arch Se­mi­nar Se­ries, plea­se click here.

https://www.wu.ac.at/en/marketing/research/research-seminar-series/