The RTN Strategic Plan 2020-2025 is enabled by a major investment from the Commonwealth Governments Medical Research Future Fund for the ReViTALISE Project (a total of $18.6 million) and the Victorian Government through the Victorian Cancer Agency grant for the Improving Rural Health Outcomes Initiative ($2.4 million).

The plan has been carefully designed to complement the research, education and clinical trial programs of the RTN-Vic partner organisation and its business needs. RTN-Vic brings together perspectives and counsel from our partners, key external stakeholders and patients to focus new business development where it can most rapidly advance progress in areas of unmet need. 

Effective and strategic collaboration with other cancer trial partners is the key to the RTN-Vic success from 2017-2019 and going forward to accelerate the journey to better outcomes for Victorian regional cancer patients.

While the strategy’s vision remains the same as 2017-2019, the strategy itself has been refreshed to ensure it can continue to guide our collective efforts in the years ahead. 2020 was a challenge for all of us. COVID19 created difficulties in our work spaces as well as in service delivery, Clinical Trials were no exception.

The Oncology community was quick to pivot to a new way of working and sharing information with the Victoria Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) and Monash partners, starting a Victorian COVID19 Cancer Network (VCCN) Slack communication channel to assist with disseminating news relating to Cancer and COVID19.

The 2020 clinical trial data from the RTN-Vic showed that there was a slight dip in patient numbers in 2020 but the number of clinical trials did rise slightly. Pleasingly, we have seen an increase in recruiting trials by 75% since 2017 and there has been a 23% increase in the number of patients recruited since 2017.