Clinical trials create hope for the future

Currently there are 650 active clinical trials across Alfred Health, and every department is engaged in clinical trials at varying levels. This sets The Alfred apart from most other hospitals. Director of Research at The Alfred, Professor Stephen Jane, said clinical trials are important for a number of reasons: they provide the evidence-base for improvements in existing treatments, they provide better outcomes for patients, and they provide free access to state-of-the-art medications and devices.

“Alfred has an unsurpassed number of clinician-scientists in leadership positions whose focus is engagement in clinical trials,” Professor Jane said. “This engagement extends beyond our own catchment, reaching across the state and even interstate with some disciplines. We understand that to provide the best evidence-based care for our patients, deep involvement in clinical trials is essential.”

Professor Terence O’Brien, head of Alfred Brain and the Central Clinical School at Monash University, said tertiary partnerships were crucial to the future of medicine.

“The Monash-Alfred partnership is a powerful and highly strategic partnership enabling clinical trials,” Prof O’Brien said. “It takes advantage of the academic/clinical trials design and analysis expertise of Monash with the patient care expertise, and the fact that patients come to the Alfred from all across Victoria and Australia to have the latest/most advanced treatments for challenging clinical conditions.”

Looking towards the future of clinical trials, Professor O’Brien forsees exciting developments including novel, personalised medicines, new technologies like neurostimulation, minimally invasive surgical techniques and advances in imaging technologies.

Every department across Alfred Health is involved in clinical trials in some way. Professor Tracey Bucknall, Director of Nursing Research at The Alfred, enjoys being involved in clinical trials because “they establish the evidence to know whether something is the right thing to do”. The trial Professor Bucknall is most proud of is the PRONTO trial, which focused on studying the ability of interventions to improve nurses response to clinical deterioration.

“That was a large study, we studied 26,000 abnormal vital signs. It took place across four hospitals, 36 wards and involved over 6000 patients,” Professor Bucknall said.

“Six months after the end of the trial, patients in the intervention wards were staying in hospital two days less as a result.”

Clinical Trials Day is celebrated globally on May 20 to recognize the day that James Lind, a ship’s surgeon in the British Royal Navy, started what is often considered the first randomized clinical trial (in this case, to study the effects of different treatments on scurvy in sailors), on May 20, 1774.