Asia Pacific Research Accelerator (APRA) Program

Project Details

Asia Pacific Research Accelerator (APRA) Program, is a not-for-profit platform development project owned by Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) affiliated with the University of Melbourne and led by Professor Mingguang He. The mission is to bring Australian expertise and experience to China and other Asia-Pacific countries, and help the hospitals accelerate research development, and ultimately develop a large scale centralized, standardized data and management platform for conducting international standard clinical research.

Program activities:
*Hospital-based Academic Development
Provide academic and technical support to Chinese hospitals including
oInfrastructural assessment and situational analysis
oStrategic planning and action plan development
oClinical research centre or base construction
oAcademic support on publication, scientific output, grant application, IP management
oTraining to cultivate research elites and boosting research ethics and integrity
oPromote international academic cooperation

*Human Resource Development
Build research capacity through training and collaboration, including
oPIs matching project to link up the PIs (Principle investigators)  in Australia with the researchers in partner hospitals.
oShort term courses on clinical research for investigators and related staff.
oVisiting scholar program for the key PIs to get professional training and research experience in Melbourne.
oHands on training for the PIs and research team through collaborative research projects.

*System and network building
Develop a centralized and standardized clinical research management system to run multiple-site clinical cohort studies and trials, including
oTechnical support to put in place a cloud-based centralized electronic data collection (EDC) system for medical records
oSupport on data mining, data management and data analysis
oDevelopment of protocols and best practice SOPs

When the platform is developed, partner hospitals form close and coorperative relationship and share the same vision and standard of medical research as well as the same research system. Investigators or industry companies will initiate and conduct international standard collaborative clinical and medical research on APRA platform.

By 2016 September, APRA has enrolled 15 hospitals in China to be the partners, and most of them are provincial hospitals with Ophthalmic Departments which have high volumn of clinical service and academic background.

Researchers

Dr Andreas Muller, Deputy Director of WHO Collaborating Centre

Dr Fei Long, Project Development Manager

Dr Sumit Parikh, Research Assistant

Dr William Yan, PhD student

Dr Liying Li, Research Assistant

Ms Candy Han Yue, Program coordinator

Collaborators

Partner hospitals in China:
Yunnan Second People’s Hospital; Kunming, Yunnan
The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University; Urumqi, Xinjiang
The Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University; Nantong, Jiangsu
The People‘s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; Nanning, Guangxi
The First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University; Fuzhou, Fujian
The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University; Harbin, Heilongjiang
Henan Eye Institute; Zhengzhou, Henan
The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University; Guiyang, Guizhou
The First Hospital of Nanchang; Nanchang Jiangxi
Inner Mongolia Red Cross Hohhot Chaoju Eye Hospital; Hohhot, Inner Mongolia
Baotou Eye Hospital; Baotou, Inner Mongolia
Jiangmen Xinhui New Hope Eye Hospital; Jiangmen, Guangdong
Yangjiang Guangming Eye Hospital; Yangjiang, Guangdong

Other partner hospitals in Asia Pacific region:
To be announced

Research Group

Ophthalmic Epidemiology Group



Faculty Research Themes

Infection and Immunology

School Research Themes

Critical Care



Key Contact

For further information about this research, please contact the research group leader.

Department / Centre

Surgery

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