How to become a member of a KCE Trials panel?

We are seeking to strengthen our pool of external experts who participate in our advisory boards  and ultimately help us select the best studies to fund. One of these advisory boards is the KCE Trials Panel, a group of healthcare providers and stakeholders who helps KCE Trials in selecting the research questions that are most relevant to routine clinical practice and the Belgian healthcare system. A KCE Trials Panel is multidisciplinary and includes professionals from different medical fields as well as patients. 

The remit of the panel is to answer the following two questions:

• Is the research question relevant for clinical practice in Belgium?
• Is it the right research question (PICO) ? 

KCE Trials invites interested clinicians and other healthcare professionals to express their interest in becoming a panel member. Each year, the final composition of the panel depends on the proposals received and the required expertise to evaluate them and therefore cannot be known in advance however a standing ‘long list’ of possible panel members who can be contacted is kept.  

This expression of interest can be made at any time during the year (the final panel composition takes place in September-October).

All panel members are:

• bound to confidentiality of information
• requested to declare any conflicts of interest and comply with the COI policy of KCE Trials 
• anonymous to the applicants (only their specialty may be disclosed)
• remunerated for their work and time.

What is the KCE Trials programme?

KCE Trials is a funding programme for non-commercial clinical trials financed by the Belgian public authorities. These clinical trials address issues that are usually neglected by industry despite their high societal importance. 

The KCE clinical trials are:

• non-commercial
• practice-oriented and focused on current practice: these involve patients treated under real-life conditions (in hospitals, in the community and in nursing homes, etc…)
• comparative: they compare the efficacy of treatments which have already been used but which have never been directly compared to one another.
• potentially able to lead to cost savings for health insurance.
• not limited to drugs or medical devices: they can also involve surgical interventions, lifestyle modifications, psychotherapies, diagnostic tests, etc.
• guaranteed to generate databases that are made available for public interest research, for example to conduct detailed and independent cost-effectiveness studies.

KCE is responsible for the selection and funding of the clinical trials, but does not conduct them itself. Hospitals, universities or non-commercial research institutions take on the sponsorship and coordination responsibilities. 

A call for proposals is issued each year (usually from May to September). Advisory boards of external experts select the most promising proposals. More information on how the proposals are selected can be found here.

To date over 50 studies have been or are being funded by KCE Trials Programme (see our website).

How does a Panel work ? 

A one-day meeting is held at KCE (usually in November) to discuss the proposals received. Panel members are expected to prepare for the meeting by reading the submitted study proposals and for some proposals by sending written comments to KCE Trials in advance. Depending on the number of proposals received, we expect a maximum of 1 day of preparatory work in addition to the one-day meeting. 

Your name will not appear on our website and will not be known by the applicants. Only your medical expertise may be disclosed. 

English has been chosen as the working language to ensure efficient international and multilingual cooperation. 

Panel members will be remunerated for their work and time. Further details will be provided to members when they are invited to join the panel. 

Panel members do not make the final decision on the selection of the studies. The Panel is an advisory body that ranks the studies according to pre-defined criteria. This ranking is then used (but is not the only criterion) for the prioritisation of studies that can proceed to the development of a study protocol and eventual funding. 

Which type of experts are we looking for and how will we select them? 

We are looking for clinicians and other health care professionals active in Belgium. 

Each year, the panel is composed of experts based on the proposals submitted in response to the call. We are compiling a ‘long’ list of experts who have expressed an interest in participating, and we will compose the panel once we know which proposals have been submitted and which medical expertise is required to evaluate them. 

We are also aiming for the most balanced possible composition of the various expert groups, with representation from the different sectors (first and second line, etc.), gender and language. We cannot guarantee that you will be contacted if you have expressed your interest.