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| To ERSPC C'tee |
Dear ERSPC Steering Committee Members We have prepared this webpage so that we can share with you the details of our methodological research, our findings when we applied our proposed method to screening trials of other cancers, and our description of the data would be involved if we were to collaborate with you in applying the method to the ERSPC trial. We realize that we will probably need to meet face to face, either in person or by Skype or some such medium, before all of the details could be worked out, but as a start we want to describe to you what is involved with the method, and what the 'output' or results would be. As for a formal protocol, at this stage we can suggest the grant application that, thanks in no small part to your expressions of support at that time, was funded by our Canadian Institutes of Health in 2011. You can find this application (with some 'boilerplate' pages removed to save space) on the website below, in the row labelled 2011 Grant Application. The text, as well as appendix with the emails between some of us at the time, describe the form of the data needed to fit the model. We did not follow-up with you since then, since we wanted to be sure, before we did, that all the technical details were in place, and that it worked well with other trial data. We hope that the presentation we have now prepared for you explains the logic and principles behind the approach, and what it produces as an end product, and its flexibility. The two new reports (on the NLST in lung, and the 30 year update of the Minnesota trial in colon) were a good stress test for the approach, and we believe it has even more to offer in extracting the core parameters from the more complex ERSPC data (see the Case Studies section of the presentation) Since our presentation is in the form of 'slides' we have also put on the website a audio-annotated version for each section that explains more of the details. Just one technical issue in viewing the .mov videos. The Intro movie uses a portrait-shaped frame, and so you may have to scroll down or somewhere else, depending on your browser or media player or platform (we are Mac users) to find the controls that allow you to play and pause, and alter the playback settings. The other sections are in the more traditional landscape mode, so it should be easier to find the playback controls. (We made two versions to try to accommodate both Mac and Windows users) If you have problems, email one of us (James.hanley@mcgill.ca or Zhihui.Liu@mail.mcgill.ca) One last item: we have not put any public links to this website, as we intend it to be just for the ERSPC Steering Committee -- later we can alter the site as needed, and make some of the contents public. So, for now, we would like this be 'entre nous.' We look forward to the next steps after you have gone through this material. JH et al. 2014.04.10 |
| --- | Updated: April 10, 2014 |