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

CRR directors @Toby Richards, @Merrilee Needham
Clinical Trials Manager @Giuliana D’Aulerio, @Kelly Beer
Operations Manager @Rolee Kumar
Database manager @Doug Robb
REDCap Developer @Joseph Miocevich
Pathwest liason @Edward Raby
Infectious Disease Lead @Dominic Mallonic
Biobank Manager @Michael Epis
Sample Analyses Coordination  @Sze How Bong
ANPC @Jeremy Nicholson
SMHS Research Director @Merrilee Needham
EMHS Research Director @Daniel Fatovich
NMHS Research Director @Aron Chakera
SMHS Management @Dale Edgar
EMHS Management @Thomas Gilbert
Medical Students  @Nathanael Foo,  @STRIVE WA
Financial Managers @Candice Peel
Covid Research Response

Collaborative outputs & authorship

The CRR will be propose a collaborative authorship agreement. In principle, the CRR is a collaborations and all people offering a major contribution will be included in authorship ‘on behalf of the Western Australian COVID Research Response’.

 Group authorship: collaborators

Groups who wish individuals to be credited with authorship should provide a list, together with a statement that the individuals are collaborators of the study. The names of group members will then be published under the heading: collaborators. Each collaborator will be tagged individually, so that they will be picked up by PubMed and credited accordingly. If there is a long list of collaborators, it may be published online only.

Supplementary Material:

ISARIC Global Long Term Follow UP Study