The COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium is a global alliance of healthcare professionals and researchers committed to using ground breaking technology to identify the most effective treatments for the most critically ill COVID-19 patients.
THE CHALLENGE - A GLOBAL CRISIS
COVID-19 is highly contagious. From the initial cluster of cases reported in Wuhan in December 2019, it has quickly spread, with more than 33 million cases across 213 countries confirmed by September 2020.
Complicating the challenge for clinicians are the unknowns. COVID-19 is a new disease, so there are no established protocols for treatment. Clinicians were forced to respond to a virus that may attack multiple systems in patients’ bodies in unprecedented ways.
The virus has placed a high demand on intensive care units around the world, with many patients requiring long stays.
OUR MISSION
To equip all intensive care clinicians, regardless of nationality or affiliation, with the best and most up-to-date information to save lives and improve outcomes for their patients.
OUR RESPONSE - INFORMATION IS POWER
The virus moves quickly, so we must too.
Best practice research - that is, randomised, clinical, peer-review trials - takes time; while we know that research is essential, clinicians caring for critically ill patients need help now.
The best response to the pandemic is a coordinated, international, timely response. We now have the technology to easily share information around the world, while advances in AI and machine learning and the development of user-friendly tools, such as voice-activated assistants, can turbo-charge our efforts to learn about the virus and defeat it.
THE ALLIANCE
Involves more than 380 hospitals and affiliated research facilities in 54 countries.
Has created the world’s largest and most in-depth database to build an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) profile for a disease that was completely unknown to the world before December 2019.
The database will consolidate information from the pandemic frontlines, including the hardest-hit intensive care units in Italy, the UK, the USA and Brazil.
Will track the long-term progress of discharged patients, empowering governments and healthcare providers to budget and plan more effectively for future outbreaks and ongoing health issues caused by the virus.
Through its partnerships with researchers at the University of Queensland and The Queensland University of Technology, the Consortium will harness the powers of AI and machine learning to draw insights from the anonymised “big data” as it is compiled.
An Opportunity For Leadership
The Australian team is uniquely positioned to coordinate this ongoing international effort, because Australia:
is geographically isolated, and has benefited from the ability to quickly and effectively restrain international arrivals.
is a stable federation with a history of federal and state governments working together effectively, as has been demonstrated during the first wave of this pandemic.
has a first-rate health care system, world-leading clinicians and scientists, and established research capacity.
While others are overwhelmed by COVID-19, or simply do not have the resources or experience to coordinate this research effort, Australia does. The Australian team sees this role as a responsibility: not just to advance global knowledge about COVID-19 but to support their international colleagues who are fighting this pandemic at the medical frontlines.
Our imperatives for action
There will almost be new waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as yet, we still don’t know how this virus might mutate and how severe it could prove to be.
This will not be the last global pandemic. We need to learn from this occurrence to be better prepared for the next one.
Governments around the world need data to properly inform future healthcare planning and budgets. The quicker we can learn about effective treatments to manage this disease, as well as its long term impacts, the more effective we will be at containing the effect on health budgets.
Recent Press Coverage
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How Australian medicos brought the world together to beat a deadly virus
An informal network of the globe’s most brilliant medical minds helped us understand how to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients.
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What does the Consortium mean to our global community?
More than 380 hospitals and affiliated research facilities across 54 countries are contributing to COVID Critical’s world-first database to build an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) profile for a disease that was completely unknown to the world before December 2019.
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In the news
A dedicated team at The Prince Charles Hospital has collected COVID health data on critically ill patients across the globe.
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Covid-19: UAE's critical patients' data to be stored in global critical care consortium
Top healthcare institutions in the GCC are part of the 'Covid-19 Critical Care Consortium' that connects 380 hospitals.
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The greater the sample size of patients reviewed and treated, the greater the potential to spot trends in demographics and the real impacts of interventions.