MOBILIZING A COVID-19 RESEARCH RESPONSE

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InFACT’s priority is to contribute to an effective and coordinated global research response.

InFACT’s priority is to contribute to an effective and coordinated global research response. 

We are working closely with the World Health Organization (WHO), with the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC), and with the International Trial Steering Committee of REMAP-CAP to build a robust research response.

Here are some of the ways the global acute care research community has stepped up:

  • The Randomized Embedded Multifactorial Adaptive Platform trial in Community-Acquired Pneumonia (REMAP-CAP) - (https://www.remapcap.org) - has brought together critical care researchers from around the world, and leads the world in defining best care for severely ill patients with COVID-19. The REMAP-CAP team has published six papers so far – three in the New England Journal of Medicine, two in JAMA, and one in Intensive Care Medicine. It has expanded its reach to include researchers in Asia – India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Japan – and South America.

  • The UK has led the world in COVID-19 research with the RECOVERY trial and national recruitment to REMAP-CAP. The model developed by the National Institute of Health Research to embed research into clinical practice has proven its value during the pandemic, and provided a model that the rest of the world can learn from.

  • The Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care (GenOMICC) consortium has identified compelling biologic targets for treatment in COVID-19, and launched an ambitious program to sequence the genomes of 100,000 critically ill patients (https://genomicc.org).

  • We have collaborated with colleagues from the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) to forge a database of patients with COVID-19, and have collected clinical data on more than 700,000 patients from around the world  (https://isaric.org/research/covid-19-clinical-research-resources).

  • Through the WHO Clinical Characterization and Management Working Group, we have created a minimal common data set for trials of COVID-19, developed a model of prospective meta-analysis that enabled rapid pooling of data from COVID-19 trials, and launched initiatives to determine optimal approaches for respiratory support of patients with COVID-19, and begun the process of characterizing post-COVID-19 condition, with a view to studying interventions to attenuate its severity.

  • A staging and stratification collaboration has brought together more than four dozen investigators from around the world to forge a global collaboration dedicated to the creation of functional models to stage and stratify critical illness, so that interventions can be targeted to those most likely to benefit, and studied on this basis.

  
For the past 2+ years, we have been working in the background on a strategic plan to guide InFACT’s future – a special thank you to all who have contributed. Our challenge is to clarify the role that a global network of research networks can play – as an incubator for grand ideas that benefit from collaboration at global scale, as a repository for creating and sharing research tools, as a forum to build collaboration and communication amongst regional groups, as a platform for education and mentoring, as a champion of acute care research and a mechanism to engage with international stakeholders, and as an advocate to embed research within clinical care to ensure excellence and equitability in the advance of the science of acute care.
 
We will be working to create a new governance structure, to develop an effective communication strategy, to ensure sustainability, and to build partnerships with organizations that share our vision.
 
 
John Marshall
Chair, InFACT
John.Marshall@unityhealth.to 

Have ideas? We want to hear from you. We look forward to providing a rapid response.