Professor Maeve Lowery:

I am glad to hear the outcome for Senator Currie's mum, which is wonderful. It is lovely to hear about the good stories. We do not hear enough of that.

When we say that patients do best in research-active hospitals, we must understand what cancer research really means on an individual patient basis. Sometimes people think that cancer research is somebody in a laboratory growing cells and so on, and a large part of it is this basic research. However, what it really means for implementing change in cancer care is that we are using research to address key barriers and problems that we identify in the care of our patients. That is not just new treatments. It is also how a person recovers better from a very difficult surgery, what kinds of psychosocial care we need to provide to a particular demographic or subgroup of patients to make sure they can identify the symptoms of their cancer and attend for treatment in a timely way and what supports a person needs to live with and beyond cancer and how does that differ depending on where they live, their age, what cancer it is and what surgery they have had. There are so many questions that arise when we map the clinical care pathways for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancers that can be solved quicker and better through innovative and focused cancer research. A key part of that is that we do not work in silos. For example, I can work with somebody like Professor Gallagher, go to somebody like Ms Mulroe or chat to Professor Lawler. I could, for example, talk about our patients with oesophageal cancer who are undergoing this huge surgery. It is very hard to get them back out into the community, living lives where they can enjoy good quality of life after the treatment of their cancer. I can ask my colleagues how we can innovate together to figure out what that looks like, how we can measure the extent of the problem with data and how we can share the information we have gained to address that problem together. This is how we move the field forward.

With Covid, that research happened very quickly. That is what needs to happen in cancer research. The important thing about Covid-19 research is that everybody came together very quickly. Traditionally in research in every country, we tend to compete for funds or attention across our academic institutions and hospitals, or personally. To drive forward patient care, it is better when we are working collaboratively together rather than in silos. This applies across disciplines, institutions and borders.