Clinical trials are essential in developing new, improved, and more effective treatments and interventions. Without trials, researchers and professionals in the field cannot properly determine whether these new treatments and interventions are safe and effective.
Furthermore, when larger group testing occurs, this allows researchers to identify and ensure that any improvements resulting from the intervention occurs for as many people as possible and are not just occurring in one individual.
Ahead of the J.P. Morgan Health Conference in San Francisco in January 2023, Australian Health Journal met with Clinials CEO & Founder Maree Beare about developing the next generation recruitment platform and digital marketing service for clinical research. Maree talks about the reasons why clinical trials can fail and the importance of bringing participants much more closer to researchers.
With this need, the Clinials platform is geared towards patient centric trials and reducing site burden. The aim is to accelerate lifesaving medicines coming to market by connecting participants and researchers. The platform allows participants to come to researchers with their eligibility in hand among other capabilities.
Supporting CRO’s, sites and sponsors, the Clinials platform uses AI to convert complex trial protocol into plain language and pre-screening questions. This gives researchers the tools to communicate with their participants meaningfully. The plain language text can be used in a variety of situations like researcher led advertising, landing pages and plain language summaries.
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Surgeon-scientist path laid for medical device research
In 2022, Distinguished Professor Gordon Wallace AO and Professor Mukherjee jointly established Beyond Science as a clinician led, academically supported and clinician run Australian-first medical technology translation program.
The program is aimed at early career researchers and clinician-scientists working in medical device research specifically in otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat), head and neck surgery.
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HIGHLIGHTS The power of social determinants of health, panel discussion
Clinicians and consumers know only too well that life circumstances such as poor housing, income and food insecurity can have a negative impact on health outcomes. Conversely, participation in community activities, social connection and access to nature parks and leisure facilities can help maintain health and wellbeing.
More recent phenomena in public health have also focused us on the health and social care connection. Stress factors such as the sudden loss of employment and social interaction, moving to remote work or schooling, and the impacts of sudden, localised COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’ to prevent further outbreaks were triggers of increased psychological distress.
And loneliness is being described as our latest epidemic with chronic loneliness inked to a myriad of health problems and earlier death. A recent report found one in four Australians say they feel persistently lonely, and that loneliness costs $2.7 bn a year in health costs alone.
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Research finds many practitioners feel underprepared to navigate men’s distress
Movember’s Men in Mind expands nationally to equip mental health professionals with the tools to better connect with men before they reach crisis point. Research conducted by the Men’s Health Research team at Movember has found men account for three in every four suicide deaths in Australia, and more than 50% had sought help in the year before they died.
