veski supports ASMR Medical Research Week Dinner

On Thursday 7 June 2012 veski hosted three tables at the annual Australian Society for Medical Research Week Dinner at the Grand Ballroom, Hilton on the Park.

The Australian Society for Medical Research is the peak professional body representing our nation's health and medical research workforce of more than 20,000 full-time researchers.

The dinner is held annually bringing together the health and medical research community from across Victoria to showcase Victoria’s health and medical research achievements and was attended by veski board members, veski innovation fellows, partners and guests.

The ASMR Medalist for 2012 and keynote speaker was Dr Alain Beaudet MD, Distinguished Neuroscientist and President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Ottawa, Canada.

He spoke about the parallels in health and medical research which exist between Australia and Canada and how best to bridge the gap between research and clinical outcomes.

According to Dr Alain Beaudet, Australia's health and ageing spending is more than a quarter of the federal government's budget and is projected to increase to almost half of the total spend in 40 years.

Australian health and medical research has a proven track record of delivering economic and health returns. Every dollar invested in Australian research returns on average $2.17 in health benefits.

Other speakers included ASMR Past President Professor Matthew Gillespie, ASMR Vic Convenor Dr Krystal Evans, The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP (live from Canberra), and ASMR President Dr Paul Dawson.

The event included the presentation of the Commonwealth Minister's Award for Health and Medical Research to Professor Tanya Chikritzhs from WA who leads the Alcohol Policy Research team at the National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University.