Calls

The first step in starting trials within the KCE Trials programme is identifying research questions that are important for the quality and efficiency of the Belgian health care system. To do so, calls for proposals are advertised regularly to give the opportunity to the stakeholders of the Belgian health care system to suggest possible research questions for the KCE Trials programme. Calls for proposals are posted on the KCE Trials website and fall within one of the three different workstreams.

For the commissioned and investigator-led workstreams, different committees might be involved:

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 commissioned workstream starts with a call for topic proposals. Healthcare professionals, policy makers, patients and citizens can respond to this type of call. Selected topic proposals are translated into a commissioning brief. The commissioning briefs are published in a second call, inviting research teams to express their interest to perform the commissioned clinical trial by submitting a research outline (RO).