The Gardener’s Grove Conference 2023, which is scheduled for March 27-30, 2023, will be a fully virtual conference focused on increasing knowledge and awareness of pragmatic large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) embedded into routine hemodialysis care. The goal is to create a space for patients, providers and healthcare policymakers to discuss and build support for new trial ideas.

Pragmatic RCTs are designed to evaluate treatments in real-world conditions to inform decision-making by patients, providers and healthcare policymakers. The healthcare system urgently needs researchers to conduct pragmatic trials in the hemodialysis setting to answer important practice-based and patient-oriented questions. These trials can be expedited with randomized designs and existing data registries.

The Gardener’s Grove Conference content will consist of structured presentations of proposed pragmatic RCTs embedded in hemodialysis care, facilitated group discussions, and expert panel feedback focused on providing meaningful advice that can be applied to improve the presented trials and nurture new ideas.

In February of 2022, we invited researchers, patient partners, and other stakeholders to submit proposed pragmatic RCT trial ideas to determine if they met specific criteria to be presented at the Gardeners Grove Conference.

The submission deadline was April 30, 2022.

The Gardeners Grove Review Committee reviewed and selected six proposals to be presented at the conference and receive a combination of up to $50,000 and/or in-kind support towards the development of competitive funding applications.

Partnerships and promising trial ideas borne out of the conference will continue to be developed to support the implementation of future large-scale pragmatic RCTs in the hemodialysis setting.

With the proposed trials that have been selected, Gardener’s Grove 2023 promises to be an exhilarating experience where trial ideas will blossom into impactful research findings!

If you have any questions regarding the conference or proposed trials, please contact Rachel.VanWesenbeeck@lhsc.on.ca or use our Contact Us page.