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Assessing healthcare interventions along the complex-simple continuum.

Simon Lewin.
Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Claire Glenton and Andy Oxman.
Nordic Cochrane Centre, Norwegian Branch.

simon.lewin doesnotexist@cochrane.org lshtm.ac.uk


Objective: To consider how the complexity of healthcare interventions might be assessed, focusing on a newly developed complexity grading tool.

Summary: Healthcare interventions fall along a spectrum from simple to highly complex. There is growing interest in the design and evaluation of so-called complex interventions, but little work has been conducted on how intervention complexity might be conceptualised or assessed. This workshop will contribute to understanding how healthcare interventions might be graded along the complex-simple continuum, focusing on a newly developed grading tool. The tool, developed through review of the literature and a series of discussions with trialists, intervention developers and other scientists, identifies six key dimensions of intervention complexity. These will be presented for discussion and debate. Participants will have the opportunity to apply the tool to examples of trials and reviews and discuss its practical application in planning, reporting and critically appraising trials; in systematic reviews; and in considering the scaling up of interventions.


Level of knowledge required to attend: basic.