Category: <span>Bellberry Community</span>

In June 2023, Bellberry gathered experts together from across the globe in Adelaide, South Australia, to examine how to achieve better outcomes for patients when it comes to accelerated access to potentially beneficial medicines.

Tune into Bellberry’s latest podcast episode, ‘Tackling A Wicked Problem’, to hear firsthand from some of the attendees of this International Scientific Congress.

Click on the link below or search for ‘Bellberry’ in your favourite podcast platform.

In June 2023 Bellberry were delighted to host the “Towards a Coordinated Approach for Managing Accelerated Patient Access to Potentially Beneficial Medicines: Balancing Patient, Regulator, Health Technology Assessment (HTA), Payer, and Other Stakeholder Needs” international workshop in Adelaide.

This event brought together over a global delegation from over 20 nations including the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Singapore, and Japan from a range of stakeholder groups to discuss the issue of a gap in funded access to potentially beneficial medicines where there has been accelerated regulatory approval.  All aspects of the workshop programme were overseen by a Scientific Committee and were chaired by E/Prof Lloyd Sansom.

The workshop was followed by a one-day open day meeting where the deliberations and conclusions of the expert panel presented and debated amongst a wider local audience.  The workshop outcome was the development of an agreed statement of good practice, guidelines on approaches and a clear agreement on required next steps.

The full report from the workshop can now be viewed here, key themes from the report were integrated into a meeting statement that can be viewed here.

2024 promises to be an exciting year at Bellberry as we celebrate our 20 year anniversary. Please visit our Anniversary homepage for details of some of the exciting activities and initiatives planned to mark this special milestone, including our monthly podcast series.

Business will of course be as usual with HREC meetings being held every Wednesday throughout the year.

Please contact us at bellberry@bellberry.com.au if you have any submission queries or for any other general queries.

HREC meetings are held every Wednesday for the duration of 2024

The Quality Update for December can be found here.

Content includes updates to some of our Bellberry Application (BA) and Monitoring of Approved Research (MAR) documentation, electronic HREC indemnity reminders, regulatory updates and more.

Please contact the Quality team at quality@bellberry.com.au if you have any queries regarding these updates.

To tune into episode 3, ‘Chasing The Money’, click on the link below or search for Bellberry wherever you get your podcasts.

Happy listening! More episodes to come in early 2024.

We’re delighted to announce that Bellberry is the gold sponsor for the upcoming ACTA Clinical Symposium 2023 taking place on 27 – 29 November in Melbourne. As a not-for-profit organization dedicated to maintaining ethical standards in human research, we’re proud to support an event that brings together the best minds in clinical research.

The Symposium  brings together a broad range of Australian and International experts in the design and conduct of clinical trials, clinical data, healthcare funding, policy and regulation, healthcare service delivery, health information technology and patient advocacy. It will explore key themes, including research ethics, patient-centric innovations, and regulatory compliance.

We look forward to seeing you there!

HREC meetings are held every Wednesday for the duration of 2024

Sociologist, lawyer and Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Dr Michelle King, was yesterday awarded the Bellberry Travel Grant at the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL) Conference 2023 in Brisbane.

The travel grant will assist Dr King to present a paper in Chicago at the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IASSIDD) World Congress in August next year.

Dr King said her work focuses on defining inclusion in research for people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities and how this inclusion is mediated by research ethics committees and rules.

“Research about the experiences and perspectives of people with profound intellectual disabilities is difficult,” said Dr King.

“Most research work is done with the people around the person with profound intellectual disabilities, like parents, support workers, or health professionals.

“Including someone with profound intellectual disabilities in research can also be made more difficult by research ethical clearance processes and committees.

“My paper considers the question of ‘nothing about us, without us’ for people who may not be able to include themselves,” she said.

Dr King is also the parent of an adult daughter with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities.

“I greatly value the opportunity to travel to the IASSIDD World Congress to share my results on ethics, decision-making and profound intellectual disabilities,” she said.

Bellberry’s CEO, Kylie Sproston congratulated Dr King on her ground-breaking research saying Bellberry was excited to support Dr King with a travel grant.

“This year marks 20 years of Bellberry and we are proud to partner with the 2023 AABHL Conference to offer a travel grant of up to $2000 to an early career or higher degree researcher to assist with travel to present research related to research ethics,” said Ms Sproston.

For further information please contact Alison Rogers on 0488 995 868 or alison@livingstories.net.au

Bellberry are proud to be the principal sponsor of the ASCEPT (Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists) annual scientific meeting taking place on 20 – 23 November in Sydney.

The COVID outbreak has shown that major scientific advances enabled the world to rapidly adopt cutting edge solutions to the global pandemic and highlighted the very best of our basic, clinical and public health work. The 2023 ASCEPT ASM will look to the next transformational ideas in the pharmacology and toxicology research space.

We look forward to seeing you there!

https://www.asceptasm.com/

Bellberry are proud to partner with the 2023 AABHL (Australasian Association of Bioethics in Health Law) Conference to offer a grant of up to $2,000 for Early Career Researchers/Higher Degree Researchers to enable travel to undertake or present research related to research ethics. Announcement of and presentation to the Travel Grant recipient will take place at the AABHL Conference in Brisbane being held 19 – 22 November 2023.

This year’s conference focuses on the ongoing change, impact and opportunities that underlie bioethics and health law. The conference program is now available at: https://aabhlconference.com/2023-program

We look forward to seeing you there!

HREC meetings are held every Wednesday for the duration of 2024

50 years of innovation in cancer care: Learning from the past to inspire the future

This year COSA (Clinical Oncology Society of Australia) celebrates it 50th ASM! Following 50 years of innovations and progress in cancer care, and 50 years of COSA thriving as a peak multidisciplinary cancer society, this years ASM promises to be exciting and educational.

We look forward to seeing you there!

COSA ASM 2023

Bellberry are once again delighted to be sponsoring and exhibiting at this years AusBiotech conference. For over 37 years, the AusBiotech conference has served as the leading international meeting place for the Australian life science community. The Ausbiotech conference 2023 is an exciting event that showcases the best and brightest in Australian biotech and science. The conference features a range of speakers and exhibitors from across the biotech and science industries, with a focus on innovation, discovery, and the future of these fields.

Bellberry will be exhibiting at Stand 48. Please come and see the team for further information about our HREC meetings, the application process or just for an informal chat! We look forward to seeing you there.

The role of a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) is to ensure that all kinds of research involving or impacting on humans conform to the highest standards of ethical practice and academic integrity.  In this episode, Behind Closed Doors, we meet four members of Bellberry’s HRECs to understand what motivates people to take on this responsibility and how the process works.