The new initiative bringing clinical trials to rural Aussies

4 minute read


General practice is at the centre of the push to get people outside of major cities involved in clinical trials.


Rural general practices now have a chance to connect their patients to clinical trials using telehealth, in what could be a game-changer for regional and remote Australians.

The 30% of Australia’s population who live outside a major city are more likely to die younger and have poorer health outcomes, but are also less able to access new treatments and interventions in clinical trials.

Enter the Australian Teletrial Program, a Medical Research Future Fund-supported initiative operating across all jurisdictions bar NSW and the ACT.

Working under the Teletrial program banner is PARTNER Network, which is liaising with individual general practices to build Australia’s first national rural practice-based research network.

It is anticipated to reach its 90-practice goal within the next few months, and practices of any size are able to join.  

“As the network develops and matures, we anticipate that some practices will have more capacity than others, and that might be because of their size or their location,” PARTNER Network national manager Dr Suzie Harte told The Medical Republic.

“It might be a cluster of three where you might have more involvement at one of the bigger sites that potentially are managed by the same practice management team.”

In basic terms, PARTNER is the link between researchers looking for participants for their clinical trial and GPs with patients who may benefit from being involved in that clinical trial.

“Every trial is different, and … we want to make sure that practices have a good experience in clinical trial conduct, so that they’re encouraged to continue that participation into the future,” Dr Harte said.

PARTNER not only distributes a regular bulletin outlining current trial opportunities to its GP network of practices, but it also works with researchers to ensure trials are designed with rural Australians in mind.

 “Through our extensive engagement with trial groups, our academic leadership team – which consists of collaborations with universities and around Australia and the Rural Flying Doctor Service – actively encourage researchers to consider primary care in the early concept stage of research design,” Dr Harte said.

“[Factors] such as how might recruitment or treatment differ between settings and how research can be supported in primary care.

“Some of the examples for our communities include the travel time to receive study interventions or treatments, the location of those treatments or the use of telehealth for consultation and consent procedures.

“We’re aware that primary health providers are often really busy and PARTNER is supporting the development of research infrastructure that will better enable GPs to take part in research without adding additional burden to an already thinly stretched workforce.”

PARTNER Network is looking to attract trials that are primary care focussed and accessible to remote communities.

“That may mean that the conduct of a trial is using an online telehealth consultation, it might well be that it’s a referral for an intervention on the general practice electronic medical record patient database,” Dr Harte said.  

“The focus, though, is on getting involved early [and] working with trial groups … to take the burden off the patient, who may be managing a health condition, to travel a long distance.”

Trials that have approached PARTNER for review have looked at topics like cancer, COPD, insomnia, chronic pain and mental health.

More specific examples, Dr Harte said, have included expressions of interest for a cardiovascular device and a trial looking at using telehealth tools to take images of suspicious lesions rather than going straight to biopsy.

The other big issue that PARTNER is hoping to address is the dearth of GP researchers in Australia.

Practices that join the network do a CPD-accredited four-module training program that Dr Harte’s team hope will help foster more research questions generated by GPs that are related to the communities they serve, which can be fed back into the research ecosystem.

“The education modules that have been developed will be used not only by GPs, but also the practice staff,” Dr Harte said.

“[We are hoping to involve other] clinician-researchers, such as practice-based nurses, allied health clinician researchers and practice managers, who often form the backbone of the support and administration for enabling really important research accreditation activities.”

Practices outside of a metropolitan area – anywhere from a Modified Monash Model 2 to 7 – can contact PARTNER directly to get involved.

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