New Collaborations Will Ensure Faster Implementation of Research of Benefit to Patients

Better prevention, more accurate diagnoses and effective treatment of patients. This is the objective of the CAGs, which are collaborations between researchers and clinicians at hospitals and universities. The collaborations are conducted across the GCHSP partnership organisations: the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, Region Zealand and the Capital Region of Denmark.

Now the partnership is launching another four CAGs, which will strengthen and unite clinical practice, research, education and skills development within colorectal cancer, skin cancer, chronic inflammation in the body and chronically ill elderly citizens.

‘We face a series of very complex health challenges. Research will help solve them. To do so we need large-scale research collaborations across universities and hospitals, where basic, translational, clinical and health technological research together contribute to identifying, developing and implementing solutions. In Denmark, we are already doing this, but we need to be even better at it’, says Director of GCHSP Per Jørgensen.

Improved Treatment of Elderly Citizens Suffering from Acute and Chronic Diseases
More than 1 million in 1.3 million hospital admissions per year in Denmark are acute, and 70 per cent concern elders. The onset of acute illness in the elderly population is often complicated by competing acute and chronic conditions and polypharmacy, resulting in increased risk of adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals and poor quality of treatments.

Together Professor Ove Andersen from Hvidovre Hospital and Professor Lene Juel Rasmussen from the University of Copenhagen have established a CAG focussing on the connection between ageing, acute disease and the development of chronic conditions in elderly citizens. The objective of the CAG is to improve acute treatment of elderly and fragile patients experiencing acute hospital admissions and to optimise healthcare for the elderly population in Denmark. The collaboration involves a series of health professional areas, the emergency hospitals in the Capital Region of Denmark and Region Zealand and researchers within both biomedicine, social science, political science and socio-economics of benefit to cross-disciplinary education and development of new treatment models for implementation in the healthcare system.

‘In Center for Healthy Aging we want to make sure that our research is being put to good use, which it will be in this collaboration. Therefore, we are very excited about the opportunity for a close collaboration with both The Capitol Region of Denmark, Region Zealand and DTU,’ says Executive Director of Center for Healthy Aging, Lene Juel Rasmussen.

Associate Professor Maria Kristiansen and Professor Karsten Vrangbæk from Center for Healthy Aging are also part of the group.