Study-A-Thon: Maratones Académicas para Acelerar la Investigación y la Colaboración Multicéntrica

A Study-A-Thon is an academic event organized by educational institutions, scientific societies, or groups that lasts 2 to 5 days and 8-10 hours/day of work. It is a “marathon” and “catalyst” of science because it concentrates what would typically have been a much lengthy period into a shorter sprint. Its main objective is to unite key actors for academic projects. In research, they are used to plan multicenter and multinational studies, accelerating the learning process and problem-solving, including debates and bibliographic readings for making consensual decisions (e.g., inclusion criteria, the definition of outcomes, operationalization of variables of an epidemiological protocol). The acceleration of this process allows network collaboration, using real-world observational data (collected from various sources such as electronic medical records and databases), managing to preserve the quality and reliability of the results.