Dr Robert Froud, PhD
Research Fellow, Clinical Trials
email: r.j.froud@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: 020 7882 2520
Fax: 020 7882 2552
Website: http://www.robertfroud.info/
Centre for Primary Care and Public Health
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Postal address:
2 Newark Street
Whitechapel
London E1 2AT
Rob is a manual therapist with interests in back pain, clinical trials, and clinimetrics. He is particularly interested in outcome measurement and reporting of clinical trial outcomes.
In 2003 he gained a degree in osteopathy and then spent three years teaching, and working in clinical practice. He then developed an interest in improving interpretation of low back pain trial outcomes and in 2010 he completed a doctorate, in which he focused on this and the analysis of individual improvements in back pain trials using continuous patient-reported outcomes.
Rob currently carries out research at the Centre on the reporting of trials and clinically important changes. He teaches on the BMedSci course run at Barts and the London Medical School, and together with Ros Bryar, he co-leads dissertation modules on MSc in Primary Care and Public Health programmes which are run jointly between City University and Barts. He is also studying part-time for an MSc in Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Research interests:
Rob’s main research interests are in improving reporting of outcomes of back pain trials, and in methods for estimating minimally important clinical changes on patient-reported outcome measures. His PhD research culminated in facilitation of consensus between an international group of back pain experts on a set of recommendations for the future reporting of back pain trials. More recently he has become interested in exploring what outcome measures are used in back pain trials and in the reporting and conduct of clinical trials generally (i.e. for trials of interventions for conditions other than back pain). Rob has also done some work on adverse events in patients receiving manual therapy.
Publications:
Recent publications:
Carnes D, Mars T, Mullinger B, Froud R, Underwood, M . Adverse events and manual therapy: A systematic review, Manual Therapy, In press 2010
Froud R, Eldridge S, Lall R, Underwood M. Estimating Number Needed to Treat from continuous outcomes in randomised controlled trials: Methodological challenges and worked example using data from the UK Back Pain Exercise and Manipulation (BEAM) trial. BMC Med Res Meth 2009; 9:35
Froud R, ROCMIC: Stata module to estimate minimally important change (MIC) thresholds for continuous clinical outcome measures using ROC curves. Boston College RePEc SSC Archive, s457052, [http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s457052.html], 2009
Froud R, BCII: Stata module to estimate the number needed to treat (NNT) and confidence intervals for patients improving, or ‘benefiting’ (either improvements gained or deteriorations prevented), in a randomised controlled trial. Boston College RePEc SSC Archive, s457053 [http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s457053.html], 2009
Froud R; Eldridge S; and Underwood M, Outcome measures and power in non-specific low back pain trials, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery - British Volume, 2009, Vol 91-B, Issue SUPP_II, 284.
Rajendran D, Fossum C, Collins P, Mullinger B, Froud, R Monitoring self-reported adverse events: a prospective, pilot study in a UK osteopathic teaching clinic Int J Ost Med, 2009, 12(2):49-55
Froud, R., Underwood, M., Usual care in low back pain trials, Brit J Gen Pract, 2009, 559 (59): 209-210
Froud R, Rajendran D, Fossum C, Collins P, Mullinger B. How do patients feel post-treatment? Pilot study at a UK osteopathic teaching clinic of self-reported adverse events. Int J Ost Med 2008, 11(4):151-152.