Celebrating 20 years of medical research policy advocacy

The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI) celebrates 20 years of success at a key point in time for Australian health and medical research.

In the current political climate, AAMRI is playing a key role in where medical research policy is heading.

Professor Brendan Crabb, president of AAMRI and director of the Burnet Institute, holds hope that the recently elected federal government will stand by its pre-election promise of streamlining funding and the clinical trials process.

“The encouraging news is that Abbott recently restated that there would be no cuts to health and medical research,” said Crabb, referring to Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s comments at the recent announcement of the NHMRC 2013 grant round.

Another pre-election promise Crabb cited was the Abbott government’s intention to embrace the McKeon Review.

Successor of the 1998 federal government-commissioned Wills Review, the recently completed McKeon Review of Health and Medical Research has the potential to be a critical turning point for the sector.

“The McKeon Review charts a course for new health solutions and provides a momentous opportunity for the new federal government to make its mark on healthcare in Australia for the decades ahead,” said Crabb.

“The Wills Review recommendations helped drive policy reform,” he added. “For example, Australia now produces 3% of the OECD’s health and medical research output, up from 2.5% prior to the reforms arising from the Wills Review.

“Also since the Wills Review, the biotech industry has grown by 17% per annum, from 350 biotech companies in 1998 to over 1000 in 2013, with a market capitalisation of over $32 billion. Medicinal and pharmaceutical products are now Australia’s largest manufacturing export sector.”

Crabb agrees that the challenge will be turning the outcomes of the McKeon Review into a vision or plan for the sector for the next decade.

“There is a lot to be gained by streamlining and efficiency, but this needs more funding,” said Crabb.

“Structural change or a better alignment between the state and federal systems is required,” he said, using the McKeon Review’s comments on targeting research to create efficiency within the system itself as an example of how this could be achieved.

Australia is good at basic research and has had some big wins in taking this research through to commercialisation,” said Crabb.

“But these wins mask an underperformance in translation because we are underutilising our own industry, especially in taking early discoveries through to something bigger companies would be interested in commercialising.”

Crabb suggested one way to address this would be getting the government to seed and leverage more R&D from industry, locally and overseas. This could then fill the gap in translation and lead to a team approach in taking things through to commercialisation.

“There is a confluence of events happening at the moment,” said Crabb. “It is a difficult time with funding for research at a low and this is mixed with great recognition of the value of health and medical research and what it has generated over the last 20 years.

“There is also recognition of the need for medical research to play a role in the knowledge economy and how it can be used to deal with the burgeoning expenditure on health, which is predicted to grow from 4 to 7% of GDP by 2050.”

AAMRI’s 20th birthday will be celebrated at its annual meeting in Canberra, with Minister for Health Peter Dutton as guest of honour and other luminaries in the medical research sector taking part.