The International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC) was launched on December 16, 2011, and is a group of international organisations taking part in a new global consortium organized to prepare clinical research for future influenza pandemics or other rapidly emerging public health threats.
Infectious outbreaks are not limited only to influenza outbreaks but are global phenomena that are occurring with increasing frequency.
The standardized and open-access protocols developed during this consortium will allow researchers from all participating countries to work with, adapt and evolve common clinical case ascertainment. This will ensure that high-quality and comparable clinical research is practiced on a global scale.
As part of The Global Health Network (TGHN) also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ISARIC has “an overreaching ambition to change the way in which research is carried out during and between epidemics, ISARIC aims to address the social and ethical issues related to this paradigm change.”
The ISARIC is being launched by the Wellcome Trust, and the UK Medical Research Council, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Inserm, Li Ka Shing Oxford Global Health Programme and the Singapore Ministry of Health.