Pragmatic Evidence Lab

Lars G. Hemkens, MD, MPH is Senior Scientist at Department of Clinical Research, University of Basel and Lead Pragmatic Trials and Real World Evidence at the Research Center for Clinical Neuroimmunology and Neuroscience Basel (RC2NB). Dr. Hemkens is affiliated with the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS; Stanford University, USA) and the Meta-Research Innovation Center Berlin (METRIC-B) at the QUEST Center for Responsible Research (Berlin Institute of Health, Charité and Max Delbrück Center, Berlin, Germany). Previously, Dr. Hemkens was Deputy Director of the Basel Institute for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (ceb) until its closure, at the Stanford Prevention Research Center (Stanford University), and at the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG, Cologne, Germany; Department of the Director). At RC2NB, Dr. Hemkens leads the workstream Pragmatic Trials and Real World Evidence and the Pragmatic Evidence Lab. He develops and investigates digital biomarkers and digital health applications in multiple sclerosis and is Co-PI of MultiSCRIPT, a nationwide pragmatic platform trial fully embedded in the Swiss MS cohort as a learning health care system to continuously improve care of persons with multiple sclerosis. At the Department of Clinical Research, he co-designs various clinical studies in a wide range of medical fields and closely supervises the design of nationwide investigator initiate clinical trials. Dr. Hemkens is associate editor and thematic series editor of “Big data for randomized trials” at Trials, sits in the editorial board of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, and in the working committee of the RECORD reporting guideline group. Dr. Hemkens’ teaches comparative effectiveness research and pragmatic trial design at the University of Basel and Sorbonne Paris Cité, France.