NHMRC reports on progress to improve clinical trials
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), tasked with implementing a range of initiatives designed to make the process of initiating and conducting clinical trials in Australia significantly more efficient and cost effective, has reported on the progress of work under the initiative and advised it will update the information monthly.
The work, under the Australian Government’s ‘Accelerating Clinical Trials Reforms’ initiative, was prompted by the 11 recommendations of the former Clinical Trials Action Group (CTAG), which has since been superseded as the Clinical Trial Advisory Committee (CTAC).
The initiatives are aimed at keeping Australia competitive as a destination for clinical trials and have three broad aims:
- Streamline research governance and ethical approval of clinical trials.
- Develop training and education for researchers and support staff in industry and academia in order to facilitate clinical trial application submission and assessment.
- Develop a pilot project for the development of a fully interactive clinical trials portal which, it is hoped, would lead to increased patient recruitment into clinical trials.
The NHMRC has advised that it has exclusive responsibility for streamlining research governance, and the development of training and education is being conducted jointly by NHMRC and the Department of Industry. The development of a fully interactive clinical trials portal is being overseen largely by the Department of Industry, with NHMRC having responsibility for establishing a steering group.
The NHMRC also advised it has received funding in July 2014 as part of the government’s commitment to ‘Simplified and Consistent Health and Medical Research’. The funding from this initiative will initially be used to consider the feasibility of providing support for a small number of human research ethics committees (HRECs) to improve their efficiency during the review of clinical trials ethics applications.
The detailed update can be found here
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