NICM is please to announce the outcomes of its Integrated Care Research Program grants for 2009.

Reviewed by an independent international assessment committee, six grants have been allocated, two as a result of a partnership between NICM and the National Breast Cancer Foundation.   This partnership is particularly significant and valuable in light of the high rate of use of complementary medicine by women with breast cancer.

The Integrated Care Research Program was established to seed research and data collection that will help develop the evidence base of integrated care within Australia, being mixed use of mainstream and complementary medicine.

There is currently no clear picture of how integrated care is being used by healthcare practitioners in Australia despite widespread practice in a range of settings.  The grants will help provide insights into the impact integrated care can make to our health system including demonstrating safety, clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness.  The health and economic benefits offered by the projects and are exciting and will advance with focused and well structured research.

Two types of grants were available.  Type 1 (scale up) grants are designed to accelerate integrated care research where there is already strong preliminary evidence of safety, efficacy and cost effectiveness arising from research undertaken in Australia.  Type 2 (research program developmental) grants are aimed at an earlier stage of research, providing assistance for the development of research programs in integrated care settings.

The grant recipients will address a range of issues, from testing whether people can recover from heart surgery faster, to trialling herbal therapies alongside chemotherapy and the use of acupuncture with IVF.  A list of the six recipients and a summary of their proposed work is available -    Integrated Care Research Program Grant Recipients 47.50 Kb

In addition to the grants program, NICM commissioned a review of integrative care initiatives and models as part of its translational research program.  Information about this review and associated report and resources is available -  Integrative Care Resources 66.50 Kb