The Covid Research Response (CRR)

The global impact of COVID-19 is profound with severe implications for citizen health, the economy and possible public order threat.

Western Australia is the last advanced medical jurisdiction in the world to have sufficient time – albeit only a matter of weeks – to plan a clinical response to treat COVId-19. Currently there is no proven treatment or cure. Globally, hospital research to prevent has floundered due to overwhealming clinical caseload and redirection of staff. However, Western Australia has the opportunity to act now. We are ideally placed to be the epicentre of research and development into COVID-19.

We have developed a automated platform of patient data collection through hospital IT systems coupled with patient sample collection, enabling research to continue in the pandemic. Further, UWA & Murdoch are collocated with the largest hospital in the state, and ideally suited to facilitate patient clinical data and also patient samples. The Australian National Phenome Centre is the largest most advanced experimental laboratory in the southern hemisphere, able to process samples in a real time fashion, accurate to produce a chemical fingerprint of a patient’s health today. The ANPC sits in the same university building at FSH and there is direct access to the Pawsey supercomputer.

Consequently researchers from WA can access real time patient clinical data combined with outstanding laboratory analyses, that can be processed through the WA supercomputer network. Different approaches to understanding the infection that are relevant to both individual patients and the general population will be examined to triangulate treatment and outcome effects.

​​​​​​​The outcome will be a genuinely world-leading, WA response to the viral threat. The set up and foundation of the CRR will be  and be a critical base for research and clinical trials conducted in WA, now and for decades to come.

The CRR Team