WINNER Centre, NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre
WINNER (Worldwide Interactive Network for Neonatal Education and Research) Centre, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Clinical Trials Centre
Saving millions more lives through mega-trials introducing the ALPHA Collaboration.
This video highlights some of the 14 neonatal and perinatal trial projects being coordinated at NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Sydney and how they are helping to change worldwide clinical practice.
Randomised clinical trials are already saving and improving the lives of thousands of mothers and children. But by reaching their full potential through international partnership, they could save many millions more.
Our ultimate aim, working with many others worldwide, is to embed in routine care globally a new generation of mega-trials - enrolling 5,000 to 50,000 participants or more. The ALPHA Collaboration supports that aim.
What inspires us? Three examples…
In the last 30-40 years globally, overviews of randomised trials
·in thousands of children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia have improved survival from over 90% mortality to ~90% cure.
·in 13,000 women at risk of preterm birth have shown large reductions in neonatal death and childhood cerebral palsy
·in nearly 3,000 preterm babies at birth are showing that delayed cord clamping reduces mortality by a third
What challenges us further?
Unfortunately, most individual trials are too slow and small, enrolling a few hundred rather than several thousand. As a result, most are inconclusive. If trials were faster, larger, simpler and made more affordable by being embedded in care, they could save millions more lives and billions of dollars worldwide.
The ALPHA Collaboration aims, through national and international partnerships with parents, professionals and policymakers, to promote global mega-trials, co-ordinated by different centres around the world and completed
“at least ten times faster and larger, at one tenth the cost”.