Blog

The Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) covers clinical and public health research, working with partners to enhance the infrastructure and capacity to perform clinical trials and research in Vietnam.

The gateway on Wellcome Open Research hosts articles from the researchers based at OUCRU. In this two part blog, we talk to Katrina Lawson, Grants and Communications Manager at OUCRU, and Le Van Tan, an advisor on the gateway and a researcher based in Vietnam to discuss their work at the unit, research, and the benefit of publishing via an open and transparent peer review model.

Here’s Katrina Lawson to tell us more about OUCRU and its vision for health research.

Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) is a large scale clinical research unit, with headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We also have site offices in Hanoi, Kathmandu and Jakarta, and our research activities extend across Southeast Asia.  

Impact on health

Our ten-year vision is to have local, regional and global impact on health by leading a locally driven research programme on infectious diseases in Southeast Asia.

Our research focus is broad within the context of infectious diseases in Southeast Asia. We started out with malaria research in the early 90s, and quickly grew to encompass other relevant infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue, HIV, enteric infections (eg typhoid, salmonella), and emerging infectious diseases including influenza, hand foot and mouth disease, and coronaviruses. 

Antimicrobial resistance across all infectious diseases has become an important focus in recent years, and we are also directing our research efforts on vaccine-preventable diseases and exploring these in a multidisciplinary way.

The research focuses of our unit have diversified as we’ve grown, and reflect the ever-changing dynamics in global health. Today, our research portfolio contains clinical trials (as it always has done), but we also look at other aspects of global health and include technology, social science, health economics, and engagement with policy-makers to ensure our research has the greatest possible impact.

Collaboration plays a central role at OUCRU

Collaboration is at the heart of all of our work at OUCRU, and there is no project in our portfolio that is not conducted in collaboration with at least our hosts, and frequently with multiple partners. All work is intended to benefit the patients seen daily at our host hospitals, and also to help improve patient care throughout the country and the region.

OUCRU was established in Ho Chi Minh City in 1991. It is hosted by the Hospital for Tropical Diseases (HTD), originally founded in 1862. HTD is the referral hospital for infectious diseases for all of southern Viet Nam.  OUCRU HCMC not only works with HTD, but also a significant number of other hospitals and clinics across southern Viet Nam.

OUCRU, Hanoi was established in 2006 and is hosted by the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases (NHTD). NHTD is a tertiary care centre for infectious diseases in northern Viet Nam and unlike most hospitals is a specialist hospital under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Health. In addition to NHTD, OUCRU Hanoi works closely with many hospitals across northern Viet Nam and, in particular with the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology.

In Jakarta, the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit (EOCRU) operates as a fully integrated segment of its Indonesian partner and host, the Eijkman Institute of Molecular Biology (EIMB). In response to growing commitments to the conduct of clinical trials, EOCRU also partners with the University of Indonesia (FKUI). And in Kathmandu, Nepal we are hosted by Patan Hospital and the Patan Academy of Health Sciences. OUCRU Nepal also works in close collaboration with the Nepal Health Research Council at the Nepalese Ministry of Health and Population.

Locally driven research

Our collaborations with local partners are what make our research relevant and impactful. Our research priorities are locally driven, and this means that the research we are conducting is always in response to and in agreement with our partners and their needs.

The other aspect of collaboration that is important to us is that it allows us to be more interdisciplinary in our approach. Through collaboration with local and international partners, we are able to bring expertise to our research that we may not necessarily have on site in our local units. This strengthens our research outcomes, and gives us opportunities to answer more nuanced questions, synergising the impact that our research can have.

The OUCRU gateway

OUCRU is one of the Wellcome Trust Africa and Asia Programmes, and as such it is great to have the opportunity to showcase our Wellcome-Trust funded work through the Wellcome Open Research Gateway.  It is also exciting for us to be able to participate in the innovative approaches being undertaken by Wellcome Open Research and to be able to share more aspects of our research through the gateway.

Free and accessible to all

The Wellcome Open Research platform is free to use and accessible to all. This is enormously important to the research community in low and middle income countries, who can struggle to access important scientific information when it is held behind a pay-wall at a for-profit journal. The information that we collect and synthesise belongs to us as scientists, but it also belongs to the communities that we work with and everybody should be able to access that information freely. 

Making science and scientific information publicly available helps to build trust for science and scientists in society, and we are proud to share our work through our Gateway on Wellcome Open Research.

Upcoming – ‘the battle against infectious diseases‘. In the second part of this blog, we hear from Le Van Tan, an advisor on the gateway and a Wellcome international intermediate fellow based in Vietnam, about his research and the benefit of publishing it via an open and transparent peer review model.