Melinda Millard

Melinda Millard is a Clinical Research Liaison Officer (CRLO) with the Victorian Spinal Cord Service at Austin Health in Melbourne, Australia.

Melinda was the inaugural recipient of SRI’s travel grant, supporting her attendance at the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) meeting in Vienna.

Melinda shares her experiences from the conference.

ISCoS was my first International Conference, so that alone was exciting. It was a great opportunity to network and inform people around the world of my unique CRLO role.

Like a lot of research, but in particular Investigator Initiated projects (common in the spinal field), recruitment and retention is the greatest challenge. One of the reasons my role is so important is that it provides a crucial link between the patients participating in trials and the researchers.

International collaboration is vital to assist with recruitment numbers to ensure the research being done is robust. It avoids replication of research on different sides of the world.