The future of medical research has never been more critical or inspiring

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To Professor Warwick Anderson, chief executive officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) the future of medical research in Australia has never been so critical to the future. It’s a statement he has made in publications and on the speaking circuit and it’s one, he tells the Australian Hospital and Healthcare Bulletin, he is still certain of.

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As Australia’s peak body for supporting health and medical research, the NHMRC works to develop and provide health advice for the community, health professionals and government and is the largest single funder of health and medical research in Australia.
The priority of the NHMRC is to create knowledge through support of discovery research, accelerate research translation, build Australia’s future capability for research translation, set high standards in ethics in health care and research, and work with partners including States and Territories, health bodies, health industries and community and consumer groups.
In his role as CEO, Professor Anderson must work to fulfill the organisation’s mission to build a healthy Australia and evolve to meet the needs of the future.
You have said, in publications and in speeches, that health and medical research has never been more critical to the future. Why do you think that at this time?
Medical research has always been important, but what is on my mind when I say that is really around costs. In recent years, when we discuss health reforms, the concern here and around the world has been the escalating costs of health care.
We also talk a lot about prevention and from my perspective, that’s where research offers opportunities for the future. It’s where we can make good decisions about what to fund and what not to fund. I’ve been saying all over the place that we should more and more turn to the evidence for any procedure or way of providing a service is effective for patients. We have started down that track in Australia where other countries haven’t. When we are asking the tax payer to pick up the bill, we are going to have to be more rigorous in basing the decision to fund procedures and services on the basis of evidence.
What do you see as the main responsibility of the NHMRC?
Our responsibility is twofold. One is to run really high quality peer-review processes so that we can identify the best people to support and the best research to support. The other side is to build up Australia’s benefits from research. The benefits are, eventually, new products and processes, better health care products and services, better ways of preventing ill health based on evidence. And, as importantly, we need to develop innovative industries and medical researchers.
‘We think Australian researchers are as good as anywhere in the world and we would like to give them the opportunity to work with people around the world and have very important international relationships.’
You often talk about the importance of translating research in to practice. How is Australia faring at this?
I think this is a challenge for research funders like us and researchers around the world. For the last 10 years or more NHMRC has been refining what we do to accelerate this and a lot of really interesting things are happening. We now have several schemes co-funded by sectors within the health system or non-government organisations that are in the health arena. This is a direct way we can help bodies fund research translation into the outcome they need.
We fund a fellowship for doctors and other clinicians who work in the health system itself, not just universities. And, we have a range of support mechanisms – such as centres for research excellence in clinical areas, public health areas or health services areas – this helps our researchers bridge this gap between research and discovery and its uptake. You know, I’m sure we would like to be doing better and you need both sides to tango so to speak but I think the high quality Australian health medical research workforce has been turning its attention to the whole health translation issue quite rapidly; so lots to be done but it’s pretty encouraging so far.
Biomedical research continues to be the major investment by the NHMRC and Australia is recognised as a leader in this field. What is the NHMRC doing to ensure this continues?
Biomedical research really is an important issue. The research at the beginning of the knowledge cycle is so important and around 50 per cent of funding we provide goes to biomedical research, so it’s a really big part of what we do. And that’s where you really want the smartest people and the best ideas. So, in our project grant funding scheme up to a quarter of the score is allocated to just how innovative the research is. We are extremely proud of so many of our basic researchers who are doing fantastic stuff around the country at the universities and the institutes. The really transformative ideas often come out of that, but balanced against all that we need clinical research involving patients, we need preventative and epidemiology research and of course we do need the research on how you deliver services to patients.
There was a recent announcement of a joint research grant between the NHMRC and A*STAR in Singapore on combat disease-causing bugs. This is exciting. How did this project evolve and what are some others?
A*STAR is built around basic research and is a good match between what they do and what we do. I feel very happy that we’ve got some really exciting stuff announced there and its frontier stuff. The work with A*STAR is just one of our international collaborative activities. We think Australian researchers are as good as anywhere in the world and we would like to give them the opportunity to work with people around the world and have very important international relationships. We are about to announce something similar with the National Science Foundation of China.
What do you see as the next exciting research development?
The next big thing I think is in the area of human genomics. There is a startling increase in the knowledge we have now about how our genetic DNA sequence turns into health or ill health. We are starting to see some pharmaceuticals produced in this area and we are undertaking big research efforts in this area. Something I’m really proud of is our involvement in the International Cancer Genome Consortium which is about 30 countries cooperating to look at the basic biology of cells that go wrong and result in cancer. Our Australian team is helping by looking into pancreatic cancer, which is probably the deadliest cancer, and ovarian cancer. We have a grant of about 26 million for Australians to participate. This work is a glimpse of the future – it’s very very exciting.
‘Something I’m really proud of is our involvement in the International Cancer Genome Consortium which is about 30 countries cooperating to look at the basic biology of cells that go wrong.’
Professor Warwick Anderson
Chief Executive Officer,
National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
‘The research at the beginning of the knowledge cycle is so important and around 50 per cent of our funding we provide goes to biomedical research, so it’s a really big part of what we do.’