A re-elected Turnbull Government is set to invest $7 million to make it easier for clinical trials to take place in Australia, potentially attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in added international investment.
Australia has a strong reputation for the quality of its scientific and medical research and is home to some of the world’s best researchers.
The Coalition has also restored the reputation of Australia’s world-renowned Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme through investing in nearly 1000 new medicines since we came to office in 2013, repairing the damage Labor did when it blocked patient access to new medicines.
We want to ensure these benefits translate into Australia completing the trifecta and being a world-leader in clinical trials.
Australia’s clinical trials environment is complex and can vary considerably across our states and territories.
This can force clinical trial sponsors to have to negotiate with multiple sites for recruitment and start-up timelines across borders, making large-scale national or interstate trials difficult.
As part of our national innovation and science reform agenda, a re-elected Coalition Government will remove red tape barriers and take a leadership role in promoting the uptake of current best practice.
By streamlining the recruitment process for industry, Australia can become a more attractive destination to conduct world-leading trials.
Featured in our new $7 million funding commitment, the Coalition will:
- Reorganise the existing regulation of clinical trials within and across jurisdictions so that there is better regulatory harmonisation and regulatory mutual-recognition;
- Improve recruitment and start-up timelines for large-scale clinical trials in Australia
- Facilitate legal and ethics approvals across multiple sites
- Take a national leadership role in promoting the uptake of current best practice approaches within all jurisdictions; and
- As part of our digital health strategy, work with the National Health and Medical Research Council to make its digital portal available on new smart platforms to boost patient awareness.
Clinical trials make a positive contribution to our health and to our economy, with up to 1,000 new clinical trials adding around $1 billion in new investment each year.
Under the Coalition, the National Health and Medical Research Council will continue to provide support for the investigator-initiated trial sector to better understand the comparative effectiveness of commonly used treatments in Australia to ensure we can target our investment towards the most effective treatments.
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