The Wesley Research Institute

Health and Medical Research Centre

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With 46 per cent of all patient admissions in Queensland occurring in private hospitals (Australian Hospital Statistics website), private hospitals are making a huge contribution to the delivery of health care in Queensland.

Due to be completed in March 2009, this world-class facility will take important discoveries from the lab to the bedside faster. The Centre will be situated on the top floor of a new development on the Hospital campus and will provide the Institute with an additional 1,300m2 of research space.

The Centre will be available to both the public and private sectors and will offer a comprehensive range of resources, facilities and staff to support clinical research.

It will draw together doctors and allied health professionals, academics and scientists and equip them to make important discoveries. These research findings will be turned into improvements to health care practice for patients everywhere.

The Centre will:

Address urgent and emerging challenges in the areas of Preventative Health Care, Child and Youth Health and Aged Care
Save money by avoiding overlap on research and generate a return on investment with a stronger health care workforce, improved outcomes for patients, including reduced costs to health care in the long term for both the public and private sectors

Proposed facilities available at the Centre

In addition to a range of research space and consulting rooms, the proposed facilities for the Centre cover three main areas.
Funding approval has only just been granted and final facilities and resources may change prior to construction.

Preventive Health Care, Child and Youth Health and Aged Care facilities

Metabolic Kitchen and Laboratory for Nutrition Research

The metabolic kitchen will be used to prepare meals for clinical studies into diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease where dietary intake and nutrient content requires close monitoring and assessment.

The adjacent laboratory will be equipped with specialised equipment including:
- A P-Pod for measurement of babies/infants body composition for studies in child and youth research programs. This equipment is not currently available in a research institute anywhere in Australia
- Indirect calorimetry equipment to measure resting energy expenditure, and a whole body calorimeter (currently none in Queensland) to measure total energy expenditure
Physical Activity Research Centre

In collaboration with universities and Wesley Hospital exercise physiologists, this facility will feature a purpose-built gymnasium and exercise area for physical activity.

Virtual Reality Laboratory

This room can be darkened to function as a virtual reality laboratory with video projection and sound system to assist in cue exposure training and associated cognitive research.
Cancer, Cardiovascular, Women’s Health and Surgery

Cardiac Telemetry Monitoring / Integrative Physiology Core

This facility will provide the infrastructure for complex physiological studies, particularly in the area of cardiovascular medicine. Resources will include cardiac rhythm and blood pressure monitoring, flexible multi-channel recording systems, exercise testing equipment including respiratory gas analysis, and sleep study facilities. Ultrasound equipment (eg. for cardiac imaging or assessment of vascular responses) will also be available.

The physiology laboratory will support researchers in diverse areas including hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart failure, and will include a patient consulting room. The location will allow leveraging of other facilities within the hospital complex, especially imaging modalities such as MRI, nuclear medicine including PET, CT, angiography and intravascular ultrasound.

Diagnostics Systems Laboratory

This laboratory will be used for collaborative projects on new diagnostic tests for breast cancer and kinematic orthopaedics by Wesley clinicians and universities.

Virtual Surgical Research Facility

This will be a world-class facility featuring state-of-the-art equipment to simulate surgical procedures that will use research to develop improved evidence-based surgical practices. It will enable doctors and clinicians across all disciplines to study and receive training in new technology and techniques using up-to-date facilities and apparatus to decrease the ‘learning curve’ and the inherent risks of untrained staff using new technology.

The facility will be equipped with tele-health equipment to connect into rural and remote areas.

Women's Health Research Laboratory

A PC2 laboratory incorporating a biohazard hood, a 37 degrees Celsius cell culture incubator, phase and fluorescence microscopes, PCR cycler etc for research into Ureaplasma and Chlamydia and in vitro fertilisation.

Nursing Research Centre

In collaboration with universities, the Institute will establish a world-class nursing research centre focussed on translating research outcomes into clinical nursing practice. The centre will develop the research skills of nurse clinicians and assist in incorporating research outcomes into nursing practice to ensure better health outcomes.

Patient and Community Resource Research Centre

To complement The Wesley Hospital’s ‘Healthwise’ Centre, this new information resource centre will research ways to provide computer-based information for patients to better understand health issues affecting them, particularly cancer, cardiovascular disease, women’s health and surgery. The ageing baby-boomer population and the steady shift towards consumer-driven health care are turning more and more people to the Internet to better educate themselves and manage their own health resources. Current general search engines and on-line health destinations are insufficient – either providing too much unfiltered information, or offering limited content that does not provide a complete picture – and neither option presents related health topics and resources in context to help consumers quickly find, understand and manage the information that matters to them.
Research support facilities or facilities to assist in translation to patient care

Biostatistics Laboratory

The Institute is committed to building the research capacity of The Wesley Hospital staff and collaborators. Research projects require data-based evidence, and therefore require skills in study design, appropriate collection of data, database design, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis. This centre will provide critical biostatistics support.

An important component of data analysis is its presentation and interpretation for the purposes of decision-making. New ways of ‘seeing and analysing’ data are being developed, under the banner of visualisation. The Wesley Research Biostatistics Laboratory will be an excellent forum for testing and targeting these methods, and thus can become a world leader in visualisation of medical data.

In collaboration with universities, the Biostatistics Laboratory will enhance research capacity through:
- Computers, databases and data analysis software
- Specialised visualisation computer and software, which can also be used for general biostatistics collaboration and training purposes
- Short courses in quantitative and qualitative research design and data analysis
- Training and collaboration on biostatistical aspects of specific research projects
- Assistance with biostatistical aspects of research grant submissions
Resource and Data Management Core

The Resource and Data Management Core will assist clinical researchers by coordinating the necessary resources to ensure timely and accurate implementation of research projects and clinical trials. It will also provide data management for primary investigators/study coordinators/nurse managers and assist in the collection of in-patient data for clinical trials.

Comprehensive patient database information maintained by the hospital, longitudinal research studies will be undertaken to identify patterns / trends / correlations between diseases, treatments and clinical outcomes, to implement findings for improved patient care.
Centre for Research into Quality, Safety and Continuous Improvement

This centre will focus on continuous improvements in quality, safety and efficient delivery of health care services to patients.
Centre for Translational Research Implementation

In order to implement a translational program, partner research organisations need to develop a service delivery model that creates cultural alignment between individual research groups, organisations and the clinical community to move target compounds from pre-clinical development into clinical trials. The advantages of The Wesley Research Institute acting as a facilitator for research include:
- Association with a hospital that has a large patient through-put
- The ability to facilitate partnerships with the community at large to engage in the research enterprise Absence of vested molecular research interest means that the Institute can act as a broker to facilitate collaborations
  between institutions.
In addition, the centre will develop a world-class model of translating clinical research findings into hospital-wide clinical improvement practices that could be adopted and implemented in public and private hospitals throughout Queensland, Australia and the world.
Information Technology and E-Technology (IT and ET) Laboratory

The lab will facilitate information technology and e-technologies research (eg. e-health, e-commerce, e-procurement) with respect to:
- Improving patient care (eg. paperless wards, e-consultations, remote monitoring of patients in their home) and more cost-effective delivery of health care
- Ensuring clinicians have access to the latest evidence regarding the effectiveness of health treatments
This will include research into the use of the Internet to provide health, lifestyle and disease management information to the community. Other research will include better integration of health care services across the continuum of care, from primary and secondary health care, community and tertiary hospitals, community health care services; improved transfer of patient information and coordinated care; and development of electronic patient record systems that would help people manage their health and enable health care providers to access appropriate patient information to inform clinical decision-making.

The IT and ET Lab will assist the development of telehealth and related information systems to develop coordinated and more integrated approaches to health care across regional settings and across general practitioners, hospital and community care providers.
Centre for Research Ethics

This facility would incorporate the Ethics Committee that oversees all research conducted in all six Uniting HealthCare hospitals throughout Queensland. It would also ensure compliance of all projects with the Code of Ethical Practice for Biotechnology in Queensland.