The end of 2024 is upon us as we wrap up another action packed year of research – the 20th anniversary for PREDICT!
It was the fifth year of our current 2020-2024 NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) collaboration. Our new CRE grant commenced on 1/11/2024 and will support our program of emergency research in the years to come.
Please join us to reflect on these and other outstanding achievements:
- PREDICT now has 260 members – in the past year we welcomed 51 new members.
- 58 hospitals across Australia and New Zealand have been actively involved in PREDICT research and we will soon expand further to include many more regional and rural hospitals involved in our Regional and Rural Translation project (RART-Bronch).
- PREDICT has continued working actively with consumers in our research. This has included the mental health Delphi project, the PEACHY-O and M studies, the mental health prospective observational study, developing discharge materials for children with mild head injury/concussion, and the upcoming nasogastric tube insertion study. Consumers have also made important contributions to grant applications related to sepsis, steroids in pre-school wheeze, recognition of clinical deterioration, asthma, acute limp, and development of Patient Reported Outcome Measures for community acquired pneumonia and sepsis. We are nearing the end of a project seeking consumer input into priorities for future Paediatric Emergency Medicine research.
- This year we have had four successful grants from NHMRC, Queensland Health and the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation – to the value of $3.15M
- We continue our work on translating best practice in bronchiolitis care. We have looked at the sustainability of change to determine if improvements in bronchiolitis management were sustained at intervention hospitals two-years following the KT bronchiolitis trial. Publications from this trial have recently been submitted.
Work to update the Australasian Bronchiolitis Guideline from 2016 is almost complete. External groups are currently being consulted so that the finalised guideline will be ready in early 2025. - Currently, a significant number of large multicentre studies are ongoing in Australia and New Zealand, while others also involve international sites. These include SONIC (Study Of Neck Injury imaging in Children) also involving Singapore; CHOICE UTI (an RCT comparing a single IV dose of antibiotics to 3 days of IV antibiotics in children with complicated UTI); PEAChY-M (RCT comparing droperidol and olanzapine for children with behavioural disturbance requiring IM sedation; PROMPT Bolus (an RCT comparing balanced vs normal saline fluid bolus for resuscitation in children with suspected septic shock; FEBCON (a stepped wedge trial of usual care vs regular antipyretics for children presenting with a FEBrile CONvulsion to the Emergency Department), SPASMS (observational Study of Paediatric Appendicitis Scores and Management Strategies) and the Australian and New Zealand ED Airway Registry (ANZEDAR).
- New studies that commenced recruiting this year were: the MH Prospective study and the FEBCon study.
- Our committed teams undertaking Cochrane reviews have completed the review of cervical spine injury and continues working on ED management of acute severe behavioural disturbance. The protocol is now published and data extraction is underway.
- Data analysis is complete and papers are underway for the Bronchiolitis Sustainability study, Kids-THRIVE, PEACHY-O, SENTINEL, Mental Health Retrospective study, Major Haemorrhage Protocol review and the ANZ ED Airway registry.
- The PREDICT Executive reviewed and endorsed 6 new projects, many of which are now in various stages of development.
- We are mentoring 7 PhD scholars and congratulate – Simon Craig (Monash) who completed his PhD studies this year whilst juggling numerous other activities!
- Our work has been presented at national and international meetings, including APLS PAC, AFCEM (Gabarone, Botswana), EMCON (Chennai, India), NAPEM (Bangalore, India), ICEM (Taiwan), EUSEM (Copenhagen, Denmark), PAS (Toronto, Canada), ACTA (Melbourne, Australia) and at ACEM ASM (Adelaide, Australia).
- Fourteen papers were published in various journals including: ACTA Paediatrica; Paediatric Neurology; BMJ Open; Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health; Archives of Disease in Children; Emergency Medicine Australasia; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and others!
- We continue to undertake work collaboratively with the international PERN Pediatric Emergency Research Network) group on the PERN Asthma study (a global multicenter, retrospective Study). With PERC we continue to recruit in the BIPED study (Dexamethasone and Adrenaline for bronchiolitis) and our other international studies include the PROMPT Bolus Study (with PECARN (US) and PERC (Canada).
- Our online research education sessions commenced this year and covered a range of topics. These included: Research Design 1 & 2; Grants, Budgets & Contracts; Consumer Involvement; Getting your study up and running, Role of the Principal Investigator; Setting up your research dept/team and HREC applications and Central filing. These are available online, (https://www.predict.org.au/education-sessions/) and have been shared with our PERN colleagues for translation and wider distribution. New sessions will be available next year.
- PREDICT has supported the development of research networks outside Australia and NZ, with contribution to workshops and planning for a PEM research network in India, and coordinating a PEM network development workshop in Botswana as part of the African Conference on Emergency Medicine.
- The annual PREDICT members meeting was held in November at the Gold Coast University Hospital in Queensland with a live and online audience of 85 members. It was a great opportunity to catch up on progress, talk with other members, and to develop some new priorities for research.
Thank you to all members and collaborators for your contributions and support.