Three researchers from The George Institute for Global Health have been named among the world’s most influential scientific minds in a new report by Thomson Reuters.

The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 report is based on the number of cited research papers an academic published from 2003 to 2013. It identifies the best and most influential scholars from among the estimated nine million researchers who publish papers each year.

In the introduction, Thomson Reuters Vice-President Emmanuel Thiveaud wrote: “This report is an updated listing of the elite authors officially designated as Highly Cited Researchers, based on their respective output of top-cited papers in their fields… It features the scientists who have won acclaim and approval within a key population: their peers.”

The George Institute’s researchers named were:

Professor Stephen MacMahon

Prof MacMahon is Principal Director and one of the founders of The George Institute. He is a Professor of Medicine at both the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford, where he is a James Martin Professorial Fellow. He is an international authority on the causes, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and has a special interest is the management of chronic and complex conditions in resource-poor settings, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

Professor Bruce Neal

Prof Neal is Senior Director of the Food Policy Division at The George Institute for Global Health, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney and Chair of the Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health.

Professor Mark Woodward

Working in the Professorial Advisory Unit of The George Institute, Prof Woodward is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Sydney, Professor of Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.

Chief Scientist at The George Institute, Prof Anushka Patel congratulated the researchers. “This is an outstanding achievement for them and the Institute. That this honour is based on citations and their influence on their peers is a prime example of the quality and impact of our research,” she said.

Download The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 report 

Principal Director of The George Institute for Global Health, Professor Stephen MacMahon, has spoken to Australia’s ABC 7.30 on what opportunities exist for Australia as China opens up its health care sector to foreign investment.

“There is, I think, a great opportunity for Australia to fill an enormous gap, both an economic gap and a human gap in the Chinese health system,” said Prof MacMahon in the interview.

“The big killers in China are stroke, heart disease and then respiratory disease. They have a huge problem with chronic lung disease, which is not so common here, and that's partly an issue to do with pollution, but also very, very high rates of smoking.”

The China-Australia free trade agreement, signed in 2015, allows Australian operators to run private hospitals and aged care facilities in three Chinese cities and four provinces for the first time. Australia however is only one country trying to capitalise on the opportunity.

“This is not the only free trade agreement with China in the world,” said Prof MacMahon. “There are other countries that have existing free trade agreements like Korea and Singapore, both of which are medical innovation powerhouses. So if we're going to compete in this market with existing players as well as new players, we're going to have to be innovative.”

Watch the full 7.30 segment.

On Christmas Eve of 2015, volunteers from The George Institute China joined with the Chunmiao Foundation to visit children in hospital and their parents.

This is the second time we collaborated with Chunmiao since the Mid-Autumn Festival donation in September 2015. The aim was to celebrate the holidays with the children and their families, bring them gifts, as well as encourage them to get better. The kids and parents were also invited to draw a creative painting as a gift to the hospital staff who take great care of them.

Four volunteers from TGI China, led by one staff from Chunmiao who organized the activity, go into the hospital ward.

Volunteers in Santa costumes invite the child and mother to make a finger print. We gave the finger prints to the healthcare workers in this ward as a holiday gift.

Rong Luo, research coordinator who joined the activity for the first time, said she was quite moved. “What I see here is different from what I imagined. I’m very happy to find that the kids are full of energy and they really look forward to seeing people visit them and play with them. I feel great that what I do can help ease the pain for the kids.”

For Ruth, Finance Manager, understanding the stress and pain the parents suffered and comforting them were also important. “They are calm and strong indeed. But when I pat their shoulders and said ‘you’ve done great! Hold on’, I found her eyes were suddenly moist with tears.”

The volunteers handed the painting to the head nurse and explained how the painting was made.

And wish everyone a happy holiday! 

Blood pressure-lowering drugs should be offered to all individuals at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke regardless of their blood pressure at the start of treatment, according to the largest meta-analysis conducted to date involving over 600,000 people, published in The Lancet.

The authors call for an urgent revision of current blood pressure-lowering guidelines, including those of NICE and the European Society of Hypertension, that have recently relaxed blood pressure targets from 130/85 mmHg to 140/90 mmHg, and for the elderly to even higher targets of 150/90 mmHg. They also recommend a shift from rigid blood pressure targets to individualised risk-based targets, even when blood pressure is below 130 mmHg before treatment.

In this study, Professor Kazem Rahimi from The George Institute for Global Health, based at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and colleagues analysed the findings of 123 large-scale randomised trials comparing different blood pressure targets from January 1966 to July 2015.

They found that treatment with any of the main classes of blood pressure-lowering drugs significantly the reduced risk of major cardiovascular events, stroke, heart failure, and death proportional to the extent to which blood pressure was lowered. Overall, every 10 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure reduced the risks of major cardiovascular disease events and heart disease by about one fifth, and stroke and heart failure by about a quarter, and the risk of death from any cause by 13%.

Read the full story at the Oxford Martin School website.