Research at Epworth

Research Overview

The principal research interests of the Department of Surgery at Epworth HealthCare are focused on musculoskeletal disease.  The Department is relatively new and considerable time has been invested in forging strong collaborations with other University of Melbourne disciplines.  There are three broad areas of research; inflammatory mechanisms of knee osteoarthritis, biomechanics of healthy and replaced knee joints and health services and patient outcomes.

The Epworth Musculoskeletal Research Centre has been formed with access to on site laboratories. This has enabled synovial, bone and articular cartilage tissue collection for ongoing study in several areas including osteoarthritis research, prostate cancer linkage and articular cartilage biomechanical models.

Health services research in the musculoskeletal is an expanding area.   Our group has focused on knee and hip arthroscopy and looking at lifetime risk of joint replacement at a state, national and an international level.  Ongoing projects include determining osteoarthritis following sports injury and the burden of revision joint replacement surgery.  In collaboration with Professor Nilmini Wickramasinghe we have developed a group to look at machine learning and to develop intelligent risk detection methods to improve outcomes in hip and knee replacement. The Department of Surgery has an ongoing collaboration with Professor Mari Botti, investigating best practice for pain management following joint replacement and interventions for improving patient surgical experience with the use of multimedia applications.

An ARC Linkage Grant has helped build a world class gait laboratory and there are several projects currently under way investigating articular cartilage, gait in normal volunteers and gait changes following interventions with total knee arthroplasty.

Staff

Ms Diana Royce, Executive Assistant / Researcher

Collaborators

Professor John Hamilton

Associate Professor Andrew Cook

Professor Marcus Pandy 

Dr Hans Gray

Professor Colin Royse

Dr Ilana Ackerman

Dr Megan Bohensky

Professor Mari Botti

Professor Nilmini Wickramasinghe

Dr Niall Corcoran

Associate Professor Christopher Hovens

Professor Stephen Graves  

Professor Ian Harris

Professor Philip Clarke

Dr An Duy Tran

Funding

NHMRC
ARC
Epworth Healthcare,
Medical Research Foundation for Women and Babies

Research Projects

For project inquiries, contact our research group head.



Faculty Research Themes

Infection and Immunology

School Research Themes

Ageing, Musculoskeletal



Key Contact

For further information about this research, please contact Professor Richard de Steiger

MDHS Research library
Explore by researcher, school, project or topic.