Crack team works around clock to arm doctors on pandemic front line Boffins sort fact from hype

A CRACK taskforce is reading every new medical study on COVID-19 and immediately updating clinical guidelines for doctors on the front line so Australian patients get the best care.

An avalanche of medical research is published every day on tests and treatments for COVID-19 and it’s so big, no individual medico can possibly get on top of it. As a result, some frontline doctors in the US and other COVID-19 hot spots have been resorting to advice from their peers on social media for information on how to treat people.

Last week, experts warned in The British Medical Journal that current treatments were based on weak and optimistic evidence from biased studies.

The Australian Living Evidence Consortium, based at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, usually spends its time updating clinical guidelines on heart disease, diabetes and other chronic illnesses but is now devoting all its attention to COVID-19.

It has set up a war room called the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce and this team of 100 experts from 20 clinical groups is working around the clock.

The researchers are using computerised machine learning to scour medical journals and research publications to assess hyped experimental tests and treatments.

They turn these into “living guidelines” of reliable, up-tothe-minute recommendations to the clinicians treating COVID-19 patients.

“There has been a clear call for a single clinical source of truth,” said Professor Julian Elliott, who heads the project.

“Our role is to do the research, filter it and pull it together in a one-stop shop.”

Normally, clinical guidelines are updated every five years but the consortium is aiming for a weekly update on COVID-19 guidelines.

The media and foreign presidents have hyped various potential treatments for COVID19 but the consortium said the evidence was not yet available to back any of the hype for any treatment.

“The data available on the drugs studied so far is very limited and we don’t truly understand if they have beneficial effects and there are potential side effects,” Prof Elliott said.

The good news was that because COVID-19 was a virus, not a long-term chronic illness, the many trials now under way should produce results within weeks rather than years.

“There are world-leading trials under way and there will be a flow from the completion of trials to medical practise within days,” Prof Elliott said.