Who has heard of ACADI? ACADI stands for Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovations. It’s a MRFF funded virtual collaborative centre uniting 70+ partners that aim to transform diabetes and its complications with research innovations for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians across all states and territories. ACADI is run out from The University of Melbourne and led by Associate Professor Elif Ekinci. More can be read about ACADI here ACADI – Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovations (unimelb.edu.au).
On World Diabetes Day yesterday, ACADI hosted their first annual partnering summit with TTRA (Targeted Translation Research Accelerator). It was a day for clinicians, researchers, stakeholders, and community to connect, network and discuss all things from ideation to translation to commercialisation. So, it was timely that Diabetes Australia released a report yesterday about the urgent need to reduce the impact of Australia’s diabetes epidemic, available to read here Diabetes-Australia-Report-2022_Change-the-Future_1.0.pdf (diabetesaustralia.com.au). This report supports much of what ACADI and TTRA clinician-researchers together with community are trying to do with their numerous research studies across Australia in hope of being able to reduce the burden diabetes has on society, improve outcomes for people impacted by diabetes and prevent diabetes diagnoses for as many populations as possible.
At the ACADI Summit we heard from keynote speaker, Prof Michael Cowley who talked us through his innovation journey from ideation to commercialisation. Then we heard from panellists who shared their research and academic insights as well as lived experiences into how not to get lost in translation, therapeutics, medical devices and software as well as why we need to start thinking early about commercialisation. ACADI delegates also had the privilege of having Gomeroi community members join our tables who kept the discussions relevant to the real issues on the ground at the coalface. To contribute to reducing the impact of Australia’s diabetes epidemic, ACADI’s take home message that filtered through every discussion on World Diabetes Day is that we need committed and considered collaboration with community, clinicians, researchers and stakeholders at every level of research study and clinical service design and implementation.
