Improving access to clinical trials in rural and remote general practices

Many of the 7 million Australians who live in rural and remote Australia experience worse health outcomes than their city counterparts, and have less access to effective treatments. While clinical trials can provide early access to innovations in treatment and care, they are often only available through metropolitan hospitals. We are developing a network of research-ready rural and remote general practices across Australia who are interested in linking their patients with clinical trials. We are currently recruiting general practices in South Australia.

What is the PARTNER Network?

The PARTNER Network is a long-term investment recognising the importance of building capacity in rural general practice and primary care in clinical trial development and participation, creating opportunities for rural Australians and primary health care professionals, as well as researchers and industry. When established, the PARTNER Network will consist of 90 rural and remote general practices across Australia. Our vision is to:

• Connect rural Australians to clinical trials through their local general practice
• Create research-ready rural general practices that improve the speed and quality of research
• Improve general practice skill and capacity to develop and conduct rural practice-based research
• Identify and support clinical trials that are relevant to the needs of rural Australians
• Identify eligible patients for specific trials, making trial recruitment more efficient

The PARTNER Network will be governed by an Advisory Committee including GP academics, rural health academics, rural consumers and carers, and other stakeholders. The PARTNER Network is funded by the Australian Teletrials Program and led by GP and clinical academics from the University of Adelaide, University of Melbourne, University of Tasmania, University of Queensland, Royal Flying Doctors Service, and University of Western Australia.

Why get involved?

The PARTNER Network provides many benefits to your practice, your staff, and patients.

• Improved patient outcomes: Patients in clinical trials often have better outcomes regardless of whether they are in the intervention or control group.
• Early exposure to new medicines, devices and models of care.
• Patients like clinical trials: They have increased access to specialists and can meaningfully contribute to research that helps people with similar conditions.
• Be part of research: Improve clinical practice and patient outcomes through needed primary care clinical trials and teletrials. Additionally, the use of de-identified patient data already available at the practice decreases the burden and cost of collecting new data for research.
• Generate your own research questions and projects: Participate in and contribute to the development of new research that is important to you and meets the clinical needs of your community.
• Ongoing education and continuing development activities: Your practice team will be offered training opportunities in the conduct of clinical trials.
• Opportunities for income: $2000 sign-up amount for each practice, and opportunities to participate in paid clinical trials.
• Opportunities for practices and practice staff interested in active involvement in research through invitations to trials or other studies
• Accessible research outcomes: projects and outcomes will be available on the PARTNER website.

What is involved in joining PARTNER?

PARTNER is a practice-based research network that facilitates the vetting and implementation of clinical trials in participating rural and remote general practices. Levels of GP and/or practice staff involvement will vary according to the clinical trial, and practices are free to choose which of the offered clinical trials they would like to be involved in. Some trials may simply need identification and recruitment of potentially eligible patients, while others may be more complex. Clinical trials that wish to use the PARTNER Network will need to demonstrate that they can provide adequate support to practices and rural patients throughout the clinical trial. Practices will need to be running Best Practice, Medical Director, or Zedmed, and be willing to install two pieces of secure research software, Torch Recruit and GRHANITE, which facilitate patient identification and data collection.

Ethics and data security

PARTNER is not-for-profit and adheres to strict ethical principles. An independent Data Governance Committee ensures data governance and compliance, and GRHANITE and Torch Recruit maintain high levels of data security and management across all research initiatives with collected information held only within controlled, on-shore, data storage facilities. All patient and practitioner-related information is de-identified before it leaves your practice and researchers will not be able to identify individual clinics. All clinical trials offered through PARTNER will adhere to the highest standards of Human Research Ethics.

South Australia’s Academic Leads

For more information visit the PARTNER Network website or email our South Australian coordinator Pam Horlor at pamela.horlor@adelaide.edu.au.