Associate Professor Richard Robson
BPharm (Otago), MBChB (Distinction) Otago, FRACP, PhD (Flinders)

Executive Director, Christchurch Clinical Studies Trust, Christchurch, NZ
Associate Professor Richard Robson is a Consultant Physician, in the Department of Nephrology at Christchurch Hospital and Executive Director of Christchurch Clinical Studies Trust Ltd, a Phase I Clinical Unit in Christchurch.

Professor Robson graduated from the University of Otago with a Bachelor of Pharmacy in 1972 and a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery in 1977 and become a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1984. He completed his PhD in 1988 at Flinders University, South Australia.

Associate Professor Robson’s research interests are in the areas of: Basic Pharmacology: Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics: Clinical Nephrology.

Associate Professor Robson is currently Chairman of the Health Research Council Standing Committee on Therapeutic Trials (SCOTT) and the Ministerial Committee, Medicines Advisory and Assessment Committee (MAAC).



The Challenges in New Zealand Clinical Trial Environment

Clinical Trials in New Zealand involve Phase I to Phase IV trials. Each Phase has its own unique challenges but there are some common issues relating to all clinical trials. DHBs are not conducive to the conduct of clinical trials in their premises. There is increasing pressure from Treasury to restrict DHBs to the treatment of patients and to exclude research and teaching. Realistic costing of clinical trials are required. Particularly in the DHB sector or in the private sector clinical trials must be run at a profit. Investigators and teams need to be more aware of the financial implications.

New Zealand has a relative skill shortage of appropriately trained people to conduct clinical trials. We need to increase the number of appropriately trained medical graduates and nursing staff involved in clinical trials. Given our total population we have small numbers of patients with particular types of illnesses. This provides challenges in terms of recruitment. Our geographic position in the world is also a challenge in terms of companies being willing to work in New Zealand.

In the last decade the biggest challenge has been the move to contract out all clinical research to CROs rather than companies running their own internal research programmes. Although this has provided issues these are not insurmountable but are certainly a challenge for the future.

The challenges are real but we also have an enormous advantage over some other countries.