Lay summary
Well-designed randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews that incorporate such trials provide the strongest evidence to inform health care. But trials with meaningful clinical outcomes are difficult to design, fund, and run and often takes many years to complete. Recently, new trial designs have emerged which may overcome some of these problems. These designs include ‘N-of-1’ trials which determine the best treatments at an individual level, registry-based trials where all follow-up information is gathered from databases and registries of health information, and point-of-care trials where decisions to use one of several available treatments thought to be equally effective are randomly chosen rather than made by the clinician or patient. Currently such trials are not commonly performed in New Zealand and introducing them will require numerous challenges to be overcome. The goal of this research is to undertake trials with novel designs in individuals with endocrinological conditions, including hypothyroidism and osteoporosis.