FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Newswise — Allegheny Health Network in Pennsylvania is the latest health system to join the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network. Developed by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, the research network is designed to establish a network of academic and community-based clinical researchers who provide new opportunities for research collaborations and accelerate the transfer of new diagnostic, treatment and disease prevention advances from the research arena to patient care.
The research network is a collaboration of six academic and community hospitals that allows investigators to do research expeditiously across multiple sites. It is directed by Adrian Dobs, M.D., M.H.S., professor of medicine and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and John E. Niederhuber, M.D., CEO and executive vice president of the Inova Translational Medicine Institute. The research network participates in investigator-initiated and industry-funded studies. Johns Hopkins investigators benefit by performing studies on populations with different ethnic and economic demographics, increasing the extension of their research. The research network’s affiliate sites benefit by getting access to innovative research in clinical trials and health outcomes studies for their patients.
“We are continuously developing new and improved tools for analyzing research data and managing clinical trials, supporting outreach to underserved populations, working with local community and advocacy organizations and health care providers, and forging new collaborations with private and public health care organizations,” says Daniel E. Ford, M.D., M.P.H., vice dean for clinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. “Collaborations such as these allow us to broaden our scope of work and reach more patients.”
The research network directly addresses the many complexities of conducting multisite and multi-institutional trials by providing investigators with a larger patient pool and a seamless platform that uses common research protocols. The goal of the network is to speed the approval of new trials while ensuring careful oversight of patient safety. Rapid startup and timely completion of research studies, aided by local access to clinical trials, will more quickly make promising therapies available for patient use.
Currently, Allegheny Health Network’s cancer collaborative with the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center includes providing Allegheny Health Network patients with access to Johns Hopkins clinical trials and comprehensive treatment offerings, such as second opinions and molecular testing for certain late-stage cancers. Allegheny Health Network is a large health system of Highmark hospitals in the Pittsburgh area.
“This collaboration extends our existing cancer and genomics collaborations, and further accelerates our ability to advance care for all patients we serve throughout the Allegheny Health Network and Highmark organizations,” says David Parda, M.D., professor and system chair in the Department of Oncology at Allegheny Health Network. “These innovative, system-level collaborations are providing a powerful framework to share knowledge, expertise, resources and data to more rapidly advance all aspects of health care.”
The research network is a program of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, itself part of a national consortium aimed at transforming how clinical and translational research is conducted at academic health centers around the country.
For more information about the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network and its opportunities, visit http://ictr.johnshopkins.edu/clinical/clinical-resources/human-subjects-research-core/jhcrn/.
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