MoH Push To Promote Health Research
By Finaz Abu Daniel

Bandar Seri Begawan - The Department of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health yesterday launched its Second National Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Guidelines Workshop to promote health research in contributing to health system development, health improvement and health equity.

The three-day workshop at Sheraton Utama Hotel was held in conjunction with the launch of the "Brunei Darussalam Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice" book that serves as a guide for the workshop.

Along with providing a comprehensive review of the guidelines, the workshop will also cover the basic elements involved in coordinating a clinical trial and focus on the fundamentals of professionally conducted clinical trials.

Over 30 doctors and health professionals are participating in the workshop, facilitated by distinguished speakers and researchers from the ministry, as well as speakers from the Clinical Research Centre (CRC), Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia's Ministry of Health.

Kicking off the workshop was Dr Lim Teck Onn, Director of the Clinical Research Centre at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, Malaysia, who presented his talk "Clinical Research — What it takes to make it happen".

"Clinical research is translational research — research required to translate scientific discoveries into tangible human benefit," said Dr Lim.

He explained that the study of living human subjects include a laboratory-based development of new forms of technology, mechanisms or pathophysiology of disease, evaluation of therapeutic interventions (clinical trials), prognostic research, healthcare research, epidemiologic studies and behavioural studies.

"To be clinical investigator needs money, skills, time, help and compliance," said Dr Lim.

"While having an original idea is absolutely fundamental, it takes a lot of money to get the research done," he said, in reference to funding for clinical research.

The director further added that international and industry grants are also important factors and advised those interested to seek training to improve on research skills. Touching on technology-enabled research, Dr Lim explained that advances in technology have become a crucial enabling tool in many of the research processes.

Dr Lim reminded the room of the critical success factors in clinical research, namely strong leadership to galvanise the commitment of all, staying focused on research objectives, adequate resources (including time and funding) and collaborative spirit.

The final speaker for yesterday morning's workshop was Dato Samuel Yapp Kai San, Chairperson of the Medical and Health Research and Ethics Committee, who delivered a talk on an overview of clinical research in Brunei.

Despite the fact that Brunei consists mainly of service hospitals and is, therefore, unable to boast any amount of research, "it is encouraging to note that a number of doctors in their own fields are collecting data, analysing them and arrive at certain conclusions regarding the disease pattern and trend of management", said Dato Yapp.

He also hoped that medical research will be elevated to the next level with the Clinical Research Unit that is currently being set up at Ripas Hospital to coordinate and facilitate research projects in the country.

"With implementation of e-health in the near future, data collection, data storage and data retrieval will be made that much easier," he added.

Dato Yapp said that research projects are beginning to emerge at the Institute of Medicine because of the availability of funds and the academic ambience.

To that end, he expressed his hope that there would be closer cooperation between the Ministry of Health and the Institute of Medicine in research partnership in the future.

The chairperson concluded his speech with the hope that future research will be related to the acronym RIPAS: Relieve Illness, Pain And Suffering. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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