A Lookback At The “Better Methods’” Postgraduate Course 2025
Last October, the 4th edition of the 'Better methods for clinical studies in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology' took place in Athens, Greece. The course, supported by ECRAID-Base and ESCMID, was a part of Ecraid’s sustained effort on education and knowledge-sharing. We asked some of the participants at the course their insights.
Fifty participants from across 16 countries joined the face-to-face course. We asked them about their experience at the course, and what left a deep impression on them.
Ethar Amin is a Teaching Assistant from the Faculty Of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Egypt. To her, this postgraduate course was an exceptional experience: "The quality of the faculty and the relevance of the topics to designing robust clinical trials were outstanding. A particular highlight was the session by Professor Jesús Rodríguez-Baño, whose insights on clinical research methodology were incredibly inspiring and directly applicable to our work. I would highly recommend this course to any colleague looking to deepen their expertise in this critical area." said Ethar.
Benjamin Hommel is a Senior Disease Specialist State Scientist at bioMérieux in France.
"In industry, we often face complex decisions on trial design and evidence generation, so learning from academic leaders was a unique opportunity."
Benjamin wanted to strengthen his understanding of advanced clinical study designs and statistical methods. "The session on Target Trial Emulation was a highlight. It showed how we can mimic randomised trials using observational data - a concept that could transform real-world evidence strategies in industry. I also found the discussion on adaptive designs and prediction models very relevant for accelerating diagnostics development and potentially be used for registrational data" said Benjamin.
We asked Benjamin which session most spoke to him. "Mariska Leeflang’s lecture on systematic reviews of diagnostic tests resonated with me. It bridged rigorous methodology with practical application, which is exactly what we need when validating new diagnostic platforms. Henri van Werkhoven’s insights on non-inferiority and equivalence designs were invaluable for understanding regulatory expectations in clinical trials."
Would Benjamin recommend this course to other colleagues? Absolutely. "It’s a rare blend of theory and practice, covering everything from propensity scores to pragmatic trials. For anyone in industry working on clinical development or diagnostics, this course provides tools to design better studies and interpret evidence more critically. I would also add that the peer review of the protocol was a great moment, it was a collaboration with constructive feedback, making the learning experience more impactful."
Ján Hunák is a postgraduate student at the University Hospital Královské Vinohrady, Prague, Czech Republic. He found that the course provided a good balance of lectures covering a broad range of topics related not only to infectious diseases but also to clinical research in general. In addition, it was highly valuable to review the research proposals of his peers and receive feedback from senior experts in the field.
Two lectures stood out as particularly valuable, said Ján: "The lecture on reporting clinical studies in journal articles by Prof. Leonard Leibovici and the lecture on the use of logistic regression models by Dr. Luigia Scudeller. Both topics are essential for early-career researchers in clinical medicine, regardless of their specific research focus.
I would strongly recommend this course to my colleagues, including those outside the field of infectious diseases. It represents an excellent opportunity for anyone at the early stages of their career. The fact that the course was challenging at times attests to its high academic standard."
Deepak Kumar is an Associate Professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Division of Infectious Diseases, Jodhpur, India.
For him, the most valuable parts of the course were the sessions on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), Target Trial Emulation, and Survival Analysis. These topics significantly sharpened Deepak's understanding of modern clinical research methods. "I was especially inspired by the lectures of Henri van Werkhoven and Jesús Rodríguez-Baño, whose clarity, depth of knowledge, and practical insights made complex concepts immediately applicable to real-world infectious diseases research. I would strongly recommend this course to colleagues in the field; it is truly one of the best learning opportunities available for anyone in Infectious Diseases and clinical research.”
Amir Nakar is a Scientific Affairs Lead at MeMed, a diagnostics company based in Israel. He found the discussion for the study he is planning extremely valuable and a real eye-opener, especially considering potential flaws in the study design. "In most courses and conferences, you don't really get time for in-depth discussions. I presented a study we're planning and had 40 minutes of open discussion with both experts and peers, we got to go quite deep and they opened my eyes to some flaws in the design, suggested ideas on how to make the study more impactful and more meaningful to patients. I loved it.
We had a session on propensity scores that was really great. We recently started to use this as a tool to reduce bias in some studies but I always used it as a "plug-and-play" solution. Here we got to go in depth into how the calculation works, what other use cases exist and some common pitfalls (that I really fell for!)."