
Dr Kerry Avery
BSc, Ph.D.(Bristol)
Expertise
Current positions
Associate Professor in Applied Health and Care Research
Bristol Medical School (PHS)
Contact
Press and media
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Biography
Research interests
Kerry Avery (BSc, PhD, FHEA) is an Associate Professor in Applied Health and Care Research in the, Bristol Medical School (Department of Population Health Sciences), University of Bristol. She is a research methodologist who seeks to develop transformative, patient-centred methodological innovations to drive up the quality of surgical research and improve patient outcomes. She has expertise in developing patient-reported outcome measures, electronic patient-reported outcome systems, core outcome sets, recruitment interventions, and research guidelines to ensure studies are designed and outcomes are measured that are relevant to decision-makers/patients, generating high-quality surgical evidence, and improving research efficiency.
With a particular focus on complex interventions, Kerry has over 20 years’ experience of applying mixed research methods to designing and evaluating early-phase studies, feasibility/pilot studies, and randomised controlled trials (RCT) of surgical procedures and devices, and is co-applicant on the NIHR HTA Sunflower, ROMIO, and TADPOLE trials. She also has expertise in developing innovations to support patient and surgical care pathways, as chief investigator of the NIHR ROSE trial, co-applicant on the NIHR ALPACA study, and through her contributions to the NIHG PGfAR eRAPID study.
Kerry is based at the NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (www.bristolbrc.nihr.ac.uk/) and Royal College of Surgeons Bristol Surgical Trials Centre (www.bristol.ac.uk/social-community-medicine/centres/surgical-research), where she co-leads workstreams that seek to unite surgical and research communities by collaborating with NHS, university, and BRC partners to develop new methods to promote incremental evidence generation and improve the safety, transparency, and translation of surgical innovations into clinical practice.
Being strongly invested in team science, Kerry also collaborates locally, nationally, and internationally, for example with the European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the Core Outcomes Measures for Effectiveness Trials (COMET) initiative, and on World Health Organisation-sponsored projects. She also jointly-established and co-leads the Outcomes Working Group of the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership.
Kerry is also passionate about patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in research, leading PPIE in the NIHR Surgical and Peri-Operative Care Translational Research Collaboration and several large NIHR trials.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Safe, transparent, and efficient incremental evidence generationin early-phase studies of surgical procedures and devices: the LOTUS-DESIGN method
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/07/2025 to 30/06/2028
Alpaca study
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
Background Over 5 million people decide to have surgery each year. These decisions are important and life-changing. Shared decision making (SDM) is the recommended way for patients and professionals make…Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/09/2023 to 31/05/2025
Optimising the design and evaluation of pilot work to inform efficient RCTs: a workshop to consider the key issues and areas for future research
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Bristol Medical School (PHS)Dates
01/09/2013 to 01/07/2015
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Recent publications
30/06/2025Identifying and reporting modifications to surgical innovation
BMJ Open
Patient and surgeon perspectives of a large-scale system for automated, real-time monitoring and feedback of shared decision-making integrated into surgical practice
BMJ Open