Australian Sentinel Practice Research Network

Abstract

During the 1970s and 1980s the state-based Research Committees of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) in South Australia and New South Wales developed independent networks of sentinel general practices. The networks monitored a number of conditions, but did not work cooperatively.

In the late 1980s Dr Ian Steven, as the head of the RACGP research secretariat, brought the networks together and expanded the project into other states, leading to the establishment in 1990 of the Australian Sentinel Practice Network (ASPREN), a national group recording infectious and other diseases.

Each year since then a small, dedicated group of general practitioners record basic epidemiological data on up to 14 conditions.