EPISTATA

EPISTATA is a network of scientists devoted to academic rigour and committed to improving the quality of medical research. We help clinicians and scientific societies expand their research potential while giving independent advice. We are qualified experts in epidemiology and biostatistics, working with world-class medical institutions for the development of clinical or public health research studies, in both developed and developing countries. Our purpose is to promote academic rigour and integrity in medical research and to provide research teams with the support they need. While research institutions have dedicated departments of medical statistics and clinical epidemiology supporting their research activity, small clinics are rarely supported by such in-house units and their research potential is therefore impaired. We want to allow those health care centres to develop high-quality research by providing them with the support they need. We will partner up with them but we will remain independent consultants. We are based in London, England, but we work with researchers all over the world. Our mission is to provide technical support for the set up and management of medical research studies. Our partners are health care professionals and scientific societies wishing to conduct medical research and in need of methodological assistance. Our aim is to ensure that our partners publish valid, neutral, unbiased studies in highly-reputed scientific journals. Our vision is to make medical research more reliable and scientifically worthy. Nowadays most published research lacks reliability due to conflict of interest: those who conceive a research hypothesis are also responsible for the design and the statistical analysis of a study that is meant to challenge that hypothesis. External study design and statistical analysis must become common practices.