Clinical Trials

Telethon Kids Institute is dedicated to performing high quality, timely, clinical studies and trials in children that comply with good clinical practice (GCP), local and international guidelines.

Clinical intervention studies and clinical trials are a form of human research designed to find out the effects of an intervention, including a treatment or diagnostic procedure. These can involve testing a drug, a surgical procedure, other therapeutic procedures and devices, a preventative procedure, or a diagnostic device or procedure.

Until recently, children were rarely included in clinical studies/trials and much is still unknown about how children respond to some medications, medical devices and tests. Children are different to adults developmentally and physiologically. Their responses to medical interventions and tests cannot always be predicted from information gathered from studies that only included adults.

The Telethon Kids Institute is honoured to have involvement in such an important area of research.

Currently, we have clinical intervention studies and trials underway in the areas of autism, respiratory diseases (like asthma, cystic fibrosis, and whooping cough), allergies of all descriptions, cancers, Down syndrome, rheumatic heart disease, vaccines and immunisation, obesity, diabetes, and many other childhood illnesses.

These clinical studies are working towards determining what works and what doesn't in preventing and curing childhood illness to ensure that children, too, can receive appropriate, safe and effective treatment and care. The most important contributors are the children and their families, who volunteer to take part in these studies.