We are a leading player in the development of research entities and groups through our partnerships with foundations, research institutes, universities, health services and government.
Our partnerships with sponsors, contract research organisations and collaborators is crucial to bringing clinical trials of promising new drugs and devices to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. We remain committed to strengthening these relationships.
The success of our trials has led to improvements in health practice and policy at the RMH and elsewhere.
Our specialist services
As a major tertiary hospital, the RMH is fortunate to have the support of a range of services. This ensures the effective management and coordination of clinical trials.
We offer more than 130 services and 340 specialist clinics for patients across the RMH.
This includes:
- Dedicated Clinical Trials Pharmacy
- Pathology Clinical Trials Service
- Nuclear Medicine
- Radiology
- Medical Photography Studio
View a list of our services & clinics
Our Clinical Trials Centre
The Royal Melbourne Hospital opened its Clinical Trials Centre (CTC) to patients in June 2017. The CTC was formally opened by the Victorian Health Minister, Hon. Jill Hennessy.
With only a small number of dedicated clinical trial centres throughout Australia, this was a significant milestone for the RMH.
The CTC caters for clinical trials across almost all therapeutic disciplines, excluding cancer clinical trials. Cancer clinical trials are primarily undertaken at the Parkville Cancer Clinical Trials Unit located across from the RMH Parkville in the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
The CTC has:
- Eight treatment bays
- Three procedure rooms
- Two clinician consulting rooms
- A comfortable and contemporary waiting room area for trial patients and their family members
- A sophisticated pathology preparation room (including two centrifuges, biohazard cabinet, refrigerator, two freezers and specimen chute)
There is a large workstation area within the CTC with a satellite desk assigned to each of the major research departments, as well as a Monitors Room directly across the hallway from the CTC to ensure that clinical research associates from our industry partners are properly accommodated.
In December 2017, the RMH Clinical Trials Pharmacy was relocated to be adjacent to the CTC. This has helped to ensure a fully integrated approach and increased cohesion in the management of our trials.
Learn more about our Clinical Trials Centre
Our large recruitment pool
The RMH is one of Victoria's leading public healthcare services, serving more than one million Melburnians as well as regional and rural Victorians and interstate patients.
- 92,662 people discharged from the RMH in 2015–16
- 178,061 specialist clinic appointments in 2015–16
- 68,523 people presented to the RMH Emergency Department in 2015–16
- The RMH is the only accredited level one Trauma Centre in Victoria – benchmarked against major trauma centres around the world
- The RMH provides the fastest emergency stroke treatment in Australia – door to needle time treatment in 25 minutes
- More than 800 staff involved in clinical research across all disciplines
- More than 200 new human research studies approved each year
- Around 1500 active human research studies underway, of which more than 300 are clinical trials
Our clinical trial facilitation service
The RMH seeks to forge strategic alliances with study sponsors, CROs and collaborators to achieve successful outcomes for all parties, particularly with respect to start-up timelines and participant enrolment.
The Clinical Trial Facilitation Service within the Office for Research at the RMH provides guidance and support to researchers, sponsors and contract research organisations (CROs) to promote efficient start-up of clinical trials. The team provides assistance throughout the study start-up process, from execution of confidentiality agreements and triage of feasibility review, to oversight of ethics applications and negotiation of study budgets and contracts.
The Office for Research also manages our clinical trials and research studies, which is an HREC-approved listing of research studies and clinical trials throughout the hospital. This page is aimed at the general public and in particular potential clinical trial patients and their loved ones, who are searching online for treatment options.
The clinical trial listing is presented in clear and lay terms and with enough information to help guide whether eligibility is likely, but not so much information as to overwhelm the reader.
Email and telephone contact details are provided for each trial listed for the respective study team, so the interested party can follow up to learn more about the trial. This is further demonstration of the proactive and progressive approach of the team at the RMH, to ensure that trial accrual prospects are optimised, and that awareness of our enrolling trials is high.
Contact the Clinical Research Operations Manager to discuss clinical trial opportunities.
Our ethics and governance
The RMH Office for Research has a strong track record of development and implementation of streamlining initiatives to ensure that all ethics and governance submissions are processed quickly and efficiently. We understand how important site activation and first-patient-in timelines are for our industry partners, and are committed to achieving “best in class” metrics.
As part of our strategy to support clinical trial activities, the RMH has signed up with 11 partner organisations throughout Victoria to lead and coordinate the streamlining of ethical and governance reviews of human health research projects. The outcome of this streamlining initiative will see faster approval times for both ethics and governance submissions.
The RMH was also proudly a member of the NHMRC Good Practice Process (GPP), alongside 15 other health organisations nationwide, which was an initiative to achieve quicker and more efficient research governance authorisation. Our participation in this program allowed us to further expedite our timelines by compressing our metrics right across the start-up spectrum from the first approach to discuss a new study through to the first patient being enrolled. Many of the learnings from our involvement in the GPP have now been implemented as part of our standard practices, and we continue to employ this methodology to fast-track the progress of new studies.
Find out more about ethics and governance at the Office for Research.
Our research participation record system
Developed by the Office for Research, this research performance initiative aims to improve the safety of patients and to measure the performance of research projects undertaken by the RMH staff.
This initiative ensures that every patient’s involvement in a research project is centrally and electronically recorded so that a patient’s participation in a research project will be automatically flagged to any staff member who may be involved in the care of that patient (such as if the patient unexpectedly presents to Emergency Department).
In addition, this initiative allows the RMH to report on the number of patients involved in research and assess how we actually perform against proposed recruitment targets set in the planning stages of a research project.
300 Grattan St, Parkville, Victoria