Current GEM Projects:
Traumatic Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury

 

The Traumatic Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury evidence maps cover a range of clinical questions for these conditions in the Prehospital, Hospital and Long-term Care settings.

For each setting, the clinical questions are generated by consulting relevant existing reviews and guidelines and engaging with health professionals, researchers and patient representatives to refine the areas under review.

Below are some examples of clinical questions being addressed by the GEM Initiative in the Prehospital setting

Traumatic brain injury:

• Does the choice of destination (e.g. whether a patient is transported to a major trauma centre vs. local hospital) impact on the morbidity and mortality of patients with traumatic brain injury?
• How effective is prehospital intubation in patients with traumatic brain injury?
• How useful is the Glasgow Coma Scale in the prehospital phase for assessing patients with traumatic brain injury?

Spinal Cord Injury:

• In the prehospital setting what is the most effective method of diagnosing spinal cord injury?
• The effect of spinal immobilisation in patients with suspected spinal cord injury.
• What is the most effective positioning (i.e. supine or part head up, laying on side) for patients with spinal cord injury in the prehospital phase?

Completed GEM Projects:
Burns Evidence Reviews

 

On February 7 2009, the state of Victoria, Australia experienced the country’s worst natural disaster and a day that will be remembered as ‘BlackSaturday’. Scorching temperatures above 45°C and wind speeds in excess of 120km/h fanned a series of fast-moving fires that destroyed whole communities including the loss of one hundred and seventy-three people and over a million native animals.

In response, the Global Evidence Mapping (GEM) Initiative and the Australasian Cochrane Centre (ACC) partnered with the Victorian Adult Burns Service to develop rapid summaries of evidence concerning the emergency management of burns that could be used by clinicians and groups developing clinical practice guidelines and promoting best front-line practice.

 

Burn Blisters Evidence Summary	Burns Cooling Evidence Summary	Burns Dressing Evidence Summary	Burns Pain Evidence Summary	Burns Silver Evidence Summary

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Events

 

November 2010

Keep your Calendars free for the Annual National Trauma Research Institute (NTRI) Conference, - "Trauma 2010", A Combined Annual Scientific Meeting of the National Trauma Research Institute and the Australasian Trauma Society. The conference will be addressing trauma Research, Clinical Practice, and Education.

The conference will be held between the 19th-21st of November, 2010 at the Sofitel on Collins, Melbourne, Australia. For more information on this conference, email the or the

 

May 2010

The GEM Team presented at the33rd Annual Brain Impairment Conference: Innovations in Neurorehabilitation conference, on "Prioritising Research in Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation."

The conference was held between the 6th-8th of May, 2010 at Surfer's Paradise, in Queensland. For more information on this conference, visit the Australian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment website.

 

March 2010

The Australian Satellite of the Cochrane Effective Practice & Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group held a Seminar on "Knowledge Translation in Health: What it is and how to do it." Invited International Speakers were: Dr Jeremy Grimshaw who is the Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane EPOC Group and Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Program from the University of Ottawa, Canada, and Professor Susan Michie who is the Head of the Health Psychology Research Unit, at the University College London, and a Co-director at the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training.

This Seminar was held on Thursday 11th of March, 2010, from 9:00am - 5:00pm. For further information please contact of the National Trauma Research Centre.

 

October 2009

The GEM Initiative presented some of the team's recent work around Context Frameworks, at the recent17th Cochrane Colloquium held in Singapore, on the 11th-14th of October.

For more details on the Colloquium, visit the conference website.

 

July 2009

The Global Evidence Mapping Initiative has recently moved, and is now part of the National Trauma Research Institute, supported by the Alfred Hospital and Monash University.

Read more about the NTRI at www.ntri.com.au.

 

March 2009

GEM recently presented the results of a systematic review on prehospital intubation for traumatic brain injury at the Combined Australasian Trauma Society and Trauma Association Canada Scientific Meeting in New Zealand.

A copy of the abstract given at that workshop can be downloaded here.

 

October 2008

Late in 2008, The GEM Initiative hosted a meeting of people interested in evidence mapping, at the Cochrane Colloquium in Freiburg, Germany (visit www.cochrane.org).

A copy of the presentation given at that workshop can be downloaded here.