The call for a dedicated health research and innovation centre at the Launceston General Hospital has received support from three of the state's top health providers.
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Following a business case developed by Tasmanian medical research organisation the Clifford Craig Foundation, St.LukesHealth, the Royal Flying Doctors Service and the Launceston Health Hub have thrown their support behind the plan.
With no governance structure for clinical research in place, the responsibility for managing research at the North's principal referral hospital has fallen to the Clifford Craig Foundation, a role chief executive Peter Milne said should be held by the Tasmanian Health Service.
While a Memorandum of Understanding between the state government and the foundation has been put in place to provide $2 million over five years to fill the role, Clifford Craig is seeking a $4 million commitment from the federal government to fit out and fully fund the centre.
The call for federal funding has received the full support of St.Lukes chief executive Paul Lupo who said the federal government must commit funding to develop a "world-class" medical research centre.
"The Clifford Craig Foundation has been leading medical research in Tasmania for three decades," he said.
"Its proposed research and innovation centre would ensure Launceston remains at the forefront of medical research along with capitalising on the many benefits that would bring."
As Tasmania's largest private health provider St.Lukes has been one of the key stakeholders to provide feedback on the LGH master plan and co-location hospital - two projects central to the future of Northern Tasmania's health sector.
With both "once-in-a-life-time" projects expected to bolster the capacity of the LGH, Mr Lupo said harnessing the largely untapped research potential of the LGH would help attract the workforce needed to support the hospital's expansion.
"The importance of having a cutting-edge research and innovation centre should not be underestimated when it comes to the recruitment of top-line medical specialists," he said.
"The Clifford Craig health research and innovation centre will be the critical third pillar, working in tandem with the expanded LGH masterplan and proposed Calvary co-located private hospital.
"The centre will ensure the best clinicians come to practice in these state-of-the-art facilities, enhancing the quality of regional healthcare as well as ensuring the best possible health policy development."
RFDS chief executive John Kirwan said a research facility was something the hospital had been sorely missing, and could no longer go without if the LGH was to keep up with the demands of the region.
"The ability to invest and to have the right facility is absolutely critical and it gives good infrastructure to the whole North of the island," he said.
As the former chief executive of the LGH and Northern Area Health Service, Mr Kirwan holds a holistic understanding of the health demands of the North, and said there were two key measures a research centre would help address.
"The needs are very clear - if you want to attract and retain quality doctors, nurses, allied health and other staff, you need a research program," he said.
"If you're a teaching hospital, you can't just be teaching students undergraduate and postgraduate, you actually need to have them involved with research, that's just inherently part of the profession."
The second issue he said formed part of the preventative approach required in regional medicine that would help keep people out of hospital and reduce demand on the LGH.
"We need to be dealing with the chronic disease burden and the other issues that are in the North of the island," he said.
"We are a regional city, we can't expect the big cities to actually look after our health outcomes in the research area, we should be looking after those ourselves."
The broader health benefits a research centre would provide were also noted by Launceston Health Hub managing director Dr Jerome Muir Wilson who said there was a need to better understand the health issues impacting Northern Tasmania's regional community.
"Most of the healthcare we receive doesn't happen in hospitals, 90 per cent of Tasmanians will see their GP each year," he said.
"We badly need Tasmanian-specific general practice research to help us better understand local health needs and improve the state's health outcomes."
Dr Muir Wilson said a research centre would also help with the recruitment of general practitioners to Tasmania by incentivising GPs to the region.
"Regional general practitioners are in high demand, and we're competing with national and international markets to attract them," he said.
"Leading GPs want to help not only the patient in front of them, but also the population at large through research opportunities."
Mr Kirwan said while the original plan for the Northern Integrated Care Service at the LGH was to include a research centre it never materialised, something he hoped the Clifford Craig proposal and a federal funding commitment could now rectify.
"The original planning was to have research there, but it didn't happen. Now is the opportunity to put it back together," he said.
"They have really been pushing for this for quite a long time, when you look at it's a very long gestation period, so we need to go now - the moons are lining up."
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