“Navigating numbers” is a series of Masterclass initiated by a team of Charité researchers who think that our students should be able to get more familiar how numbers shape the field of medicine, i.e. both medical practice and medical research. And I get to organize the next in line.

I am very excited to organise the next Masterclass together with J.O. a bright researcher with a focus on health economics. As the full title of the masterclass is “Papers and Books – series 1 – intended effect of treatments”, some health economics knowledge is a must in this journal club style series of meetings.

But what will we exactly do? This Masterclass will focus on reading some papers as well as a book (very surprising), all with a focus on study design and how to do proper research into “intended effect of treatment” . I borrowed this term from one of my former epidemiology teachers, Jan Vandenbroucke, as it helps to denote only a part of the field of medical research with its own idiosyncrasies, yet not limited by study design.

The Masterclass runs for 8 meetings only, and as such not nearly enough to have the students understand all in and outs of proper study design. But that is also not the goal: we want to show the participants how one should go about when the ultimate question is medicine is asked: “should we treat or not?”

If you want to participate, please check out our flyer