Waste in medical research

We have estimated that avoidable design flaws, non-publication, and inadequate reporting, renders over 85% of medical research a wasted effort. This equates to over $100 billion dollars worth of avoidable research waste globally every year. We undertake research to understand and ameliorate many of these problems by focusing on poor research reporting, particularly its consequences for non-pharmaceutical interventions, and developing and evaluating automation tools to improve the speed of evidence synthesis.

The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research liteature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robus reporting guidelines. We are one of 5 global EQUATOR Centres.

We coordinate the International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR) with 50+ members from 8 countries and annual meetings: Vienna 2015, Philadelphia 2016, London 2017, the Hauge 2018 hosted by ZonMW, and Bergen 2019. This is supported by a $5M NHMRC CRE in Digital Health (CREDiH) 2017-2021.