Author: Koshala Shanmugakumar

Applications are invited for the Translation Fellowships 2021: Mental Health Program.

The Translation Fellowships 2021 Program aims to support translational research in the area of mental health.

Fellowships are being made available to high-quality early- to mid-career researchers to conduct translational research projects to increase translational research expertise and capacity in WA and facilitate the translation of research findings into policy and/or practice.

Application must be via an eligible WA administering institution and there must be partnership with at least one WA provider of mental health services. Fellowship funding up to $200,000 per annum for three years is available, which may be used for salary and research costs. This program is funded by the Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund.

The application period closes 1:00pm, Tuesday 8 February 2022.

The Guidelines and Conditions and Application Form can be accessed from the FHRI Fund website.

For further information please email the Research and Innovation Office, Department of Health via RIO.DOH@health.wa.gov.au

Information on other FHRI Fund programs can be accessed by subscribing to updates or checking the Current Opportunities page on the FHRI Fund website.

Subscribe to keep up-to-date with WAHTN news, events, and funding opportunities.

WAHTN Media and Communications  – Hannah Vu (08 6151 0919)

The course enables multidisciplinary teams to identify digital health technology opportunities which have huge potential to personalise and improve access to care, reduce costs and increase quality of care in the WA health system. The course is based upon Stanford University’s prescriptive biodesign innovation process and is taught by a range of industry experts and Perth Biodesign course directors, Richard Macliver, Innovation Manager at Child and Adolescent Health Service, and Dr Simon Graindorge, COO at OncoRes Medical, Entrepreneur in Residence at IP Group Australia.

The course is designed for passionate individuals with clinical, engineering/IT/computing/design, business, and research backgrounds. Successful participants will be placed into teams and spend time in clinical settings identifying health challenges. After careful needs screening under the guidance of the Perth Biodesign mentors, the teams will ideate and prototype solutions, and plan to implement them.

4 month course Duration
March – June 2022

10 HOUR Clinical IMMERSION AT WA HOSPITALS
Late February 2022

8 HOUR/WEEK OVERALL COMMITMENT
Inclusive of in-person weekly sessions on Wednesday evenings

Please click  here for more information and to apply.

APPLICATIONS CLOSE: 22 December 2021

ADMINISTERED & SUPPORTED BY
The University of Western Australia and Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research

SPONSORED BY
WA Data Science Innovation Hub
WA Health Translation Network
Curtin University
Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science
Ear Science Institute Australia

Applications are invited for the Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund Innovation Challenge 2021:

Child and Youth Mental Health (the Challenge)

The Challenge seeks to stimulate innovation, and the development and delivery of a solution to a significant unmet need identified by the Challenge ‘winner’ in the area of child and youth (0 – 24 years) mental health in Western Australia. Funding will be provided on a competitive basis to innovation proposals which demonstrate potential to develop and implement novel (new) processes, products and/or services relevant to this area. The proposed solution must result in transformative/disruptive change.

The Challenge will be open to legally constituted entities that may be based in Western Australia, Australia or internationally.

Up to 10 applicants may each be awarded up to $50,000 to undertake feasibility studies and/or build prototypes around their proposed solution to the problem that they have identified.  Following this, one proposed solution (the ‘winner’ of the Challenge), will be awarded up to $1.5 million to fully develop and implement the solution in Western Australia. The Challenge is funded by the FHRI Fund.

The application period closes 1:00pm (AWST), Tuesday 1 February 2022.

The Guidelines and Conditions and Application Form can be accessed from the FHRI Fund website.

For further information please email the Research and Innovation Office, Department of Health via RIO.DOH@health.wa.gov.au.

Information on other FHRI Fund programs can be accessed by subscribing to updates or checking the Current Opportunities page on the FHRI Fund website.

The Western Australian Future Health Research & Innovation Fund is seeking nominations from people who are interested in being a reviewer in application review processes in the future. Further information and the EoI registration page can be found here

State Government has awarded almost $6 million to local researchers and innovators to tackle health and wellbeing challenges related to the COVID-19 emergency. Please click here to read the full article.

View the FHRI Focus Grants: COVID-19 Recipients page for the full list of recipients.

Information on other FHRI Fund programs administered by the Research and Innovation Office can be accessed by checking the Current Opportunities page on the FHRI Fund website.

Congratulations to Professor Peter Leedman who has been awarded Officer of the Order of Australia (in the General division) at the recently announced Australia Day 2021 Honours list. Peter has been recognised for distinguished service to medicine, health and medical research as a physician-scientist, to professional societies, and to tertiary education.

Professor Leedman has actively supported WAHTN in various roles over the years and is currently serving as a WAHTN Executive Board Member.

To be recognised in the prestigious Honours list is testament to Peter’s remarkable work with health and medical research.

Congratulations to Professor Steve Webb on his nomination for The Australian Newspaper 2021 Australian of the Year Award for his leadership of the Randomised, Embedded, Multi-factorial, Adaptive Platform for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (REMAP-CAP).

Steve has coordinated efforts from around the world to uncover some of the best intensive care treatments for COVID-19, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Steve was actively involved in the WAHTN COVID-19 Research Collaboration sharing his knowledge from the clinical trials perspective.

Steve Webb is currently serving on the WAHTN Management Committee representing St John of God Healthcare where he specialises in designing and conducting clinical trials that generate evidence to improve patient care. In addition, Steve is the founding Director of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance and currently ACTA Board Deputy Chair.

The WAHTN and UWA School of Population and Global Health are proud to host Professor Merrick Zwarenstein  (Department of Family Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Western University, Ontario; see profile here ) in Perth in early-November 2019 as part of the WAHTN’s Distinguished Visiting Professor Program.

Merrick is an internationally-renowned primary care and health services researcher who trained at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), the London School of Hygiene (UK) and Witwatersrand University Medical School (South Africa).  He is recognised as one of the foremost international experts in the area of pragmatic randomised controlled trial design.

As part of his visit Merrick will be running an introductory-level half-day workshop (4 November) and 3-day intensive short-course (5-7 November) on the concept of pragmatism in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and how to design and evaluate such pragmatic trials to maximise applicability in real-world practice settings.  Workshops are designed for researchers, clinical trials professionals, public health professionals, policy makes, statisticians, epidemiologists and clinicians who understand the basic theory or practice of RCT design.

Course fees are heavily subsidised (by 70%) by the WAHTN and UWA School of Population and Global Health and specific details are available in the attached flyer below.

Register at:  http://trybooking.com/BETSA – Please note that places are limited

Click here for the flyer

Calls are open for supercomputing time on Magnus at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in 2020. If you are interested in using supercomputing resources for your meritorious research between January and December in 2020.

Please click here for more information.