Promoting international collaboration.

InFACT – the International Forum for Acute Care Trialists – is a forum, a platform to promote international collaboration in acute care research.  It was established by independent investigator-led clinical research groups and academic research consortia to provide a mechanism to build international collaboration, to address common needs, and to raise the profile of investigator-driven acute care research with researchers, policy-makers, funders, and the general public.  Our members include autonomous, investigator-led clinical trials groups from around the world, as well as research institutes and organizations that share a commitment to a vision of improving the care of acutely ill patients around the world through the promotion of high quality clinical research into the causes, prevention, and optimal management of acute, life-threatening illness.

InFACT member groups have conducted many of the most impactful trials in critical care.  We celebrate their successes.  We also seek to empower emerging groups to achieve the same impact that those of us in more favorable research climes have been able to achieve.  However the core goal of InFACT is not to conduct clinical research, but rather to enable clinical research by our member groups to achieve maximal impact. 

 Our core aims are:

·         To promote a model of high quality, investigator-initiated acute care research to patients, clinicians, policy-makers, and funders

·         To build and champion collaboration amongst groups engage in investigator-initiated acute care research

·         To advance the science and conduct of acute care clinical research

·         To build local capacity for investigator-led acute care clinical research by mentoring and empowering emerging groups, particularly in geographic areas that are under-represented.

The vision that InFACT embraces is, in some ways, a distinctly acute care perspective.  We care for desperately ill patients, and yet the advances we have made in caring for these patients have not come through the development of new drugs and technologies, but through a more basic understanding of how to apply fundamental principles of clinical medicine more effectively.  But other groups are awakening to the possibilities associated with international collaboration, particularly in the areas of pandemic research preparedness and stroke.