Research strategy for the Department of Endocrinology, Morbid Obesity and Preventive Medicine (ESF)

1. Increase clinical research in collaboration with users, industry and the public sectors

  • Our department has decades of experience with self-initiated research within the field of endocrinology, lipidology and cardiometabolic conditions. The research is closely linked to clinical tasks, with many running clinical studies. All of our units have registries and most also have research biobanks and we will prioritize further development of these.
  • We have strong competence in clinical study management over decades, with dedicated research nurses/-coordinators and consultants.  We aim to support and develop a broader research competence in our staff overall, on planning and performing clinical studies, and by encouraging self-initiated studies. We will continue to use our experienced university employees to support development of study designs and to advice on applications. 
  • We also collaborate with innovation projects, competence centres, diagnostic units (radiology and medical technology), other life sciences and with telemedicine/bioinformatics groups (UiT etc). We aim to increase participation in innovation projects.
  • We have extensive experience with clinical trials on new drugs and have passed audits from various authorities such as the FDA. We will work actively to increase clinical studies and number of patients included per study. 
  • ESF will prioritize research seminars, research updates in the clinical schedule and establish quarterly department meetings to increase collaboration and facilitate intradepartmental updates on projects and thus utilize capacity and resources more efficiently.
  • We will continue to develop user participation in projects, registries and biobanks. Users have representatives in the board of our department biobanks (for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism and for Pituitary Disease. We have a close collaboration with the user representatives in Oslo Diabetes Research Center and the Diabetes Association nationally and there are also close collaborations with the patient associations for thyroid disease, osteoporosis, familial hypercholesterolemia etc.
  • We will continue the longstanding research collaboration with general practitioners, eg in the STORK Groruddalen study, in national guideline development and research using eg. the Norwegian Diabetes Registry for Adults. These collaborations have been central to development of eg the DIASA projects and other larger applications. We also collaborate with industry (apart from contract studies) using real-life data. 

2. Strengthen translational research as an important link between basal sciences and clinical activity /use

  • We will continue our collaborations with relevant centres and prioritize combinations of clinical and translational research, ie in OUH: the Hormone Laboratory, the Dept of Clinical Biochemistry, the Centre for Heart Research, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the OUH  core facilities, and at the University of Oslo: the Research Institute of Internal Medicine, the Department of Nutrition and in institutes located to the new Life Science Center in Oslo. 
  • Our work with the general and specific biobanks and research registries will continue. Some of these have for several decades given access to high quality data and specimens for translational research projects. 
  • We will continue our work with the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the OsloMet, the Universities of Bergen and Tromsø and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. 
  • We wish to establish more combined positions in clinic and research to bridge the transitions from clinical work to research and innovation. 

3. Continue to develop access to data handling, analysis and sharing

  • The ESF registries, biobanks and research collaborations nationally and internationally facilitate access to the use of health data for our employees in the running research, with applications for data sharing and secure storage (ie the ESF registry, and through collaborations with HUNT, UK Biobank, GenDip, MoBa etc.) We aim to implement a general electronic consent for ESF registries and biobanks. 
  • ESF has for many years contributed to local and national registries such as Norwegian Diabetes Registry for Adults, the National Addison registry (ROAS), and more recently the registry for Morbid Obesity and the Familial Hypercholesterolemia registry. We will continue to give priority to this work to achieve representative sampling and completeness, possibilities for analysis and research, innovation and quality improvements. 
  • ESF collaborates with the OUH Clinical Data Warehouse and works for the development of registries in all our units. Our researchers have support of secure IT-systems for research and innovation, and extensions of this data accrual is in the pipeline. 

4. Systematic career mentorship/supervision for researchers and target recruitment to research

  • The ESF has a long tradition of good adjustment/adaptation (shared /split positions) between research, innovation and clinical work after PhD. However, we lack these specific positions for junior consultants currently, but nevertheless aim at maintaining similar flexibility, for physicians, other health care professions and researchers. For students in health care professions, we work for early recruitment to research by offering projects for master degrees, projects for the Medical Students Research Program and the medical school term for research projects.
  • We will continue to work for internationalization, the establishment of new international networks and academic mobility within our field. 
  • We will mentor career development regularly during supervision of younger researchers. 

5. Building the new OUH – secure sufficient space for research

  • The opening of the new Oslo Life Science centre in few years will co-localize many of our collaborators and we aim to use their proximity to groups working on especially bioinformatics and -omics to expand our translational projects.
  • ESF has representatives in central participation groups for the planning of the new OUH campus (research and university) and will continue campaigning to secure the specific needs of research activities and laboratories in preparation for research in the new OUH buildings, such as good and efficient clinical research areas included laboratories, biobank facilities and offices. 
  • A long term goal is to co-localize collaborating disciplines within the Department and thus increase rational use of equipment/other resources and expand collaborations.

 

 
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