SA Teletrial: Bringing cancer clinical trials to the country

Trials in cancer care are offered at major centres in metropolitan areas in South Australia. There is currently no trial running outside of Adelaide for cancer patients, making their options of treatment limited by tyranny of distance as commented on by the Cancer Australia Regional Cancer Services Review in 2015/2016. We are hoping to utilise the COSA National Guide for Implementation of the Australian Teletrial model. This will mean that Flinders Medical Centre will act as the primary site, and the Mount Gambier Hospital will act as the satellite site, allowing patients to enter into trials with less travel and less cost. It will also continue the patient – oncologist relationship they have developed at the satellite site.

It is hoped that a pilot project will demonstrate successful implementation, with high standard of governance and quality of care. This will allow a future roll out of other regional and rural cancer centre sites to be inducted into this model. The lessons learnt will ensure that future care can be delivered in a seamless, coordinated, and high standard manner, including conventional and trial therapies. This will utilise the multidisciplinary approach to cancer care, and allow quality of life to be assessed.

The project is hoped to run for 12 months and have 2-3 pilot trials run between the two sites.