Inclusive Medical Research and Health Care

We have known for decades that human beings have differing symptoms and reactions to treatment in the medical sector. Yet progress regarding inclusive medical research and health seems to be slow. To give an example: trials for developing medical drugs usually only include healthy men between 18 and 45 years of age. This means that these trials do not show how medical drugs work for women, children, elderly people, people with a non-white background and patients with comorbidities. How would medical research and health care have to change be inclusive? In this episode of our podcast series Inclusive Research and Innovation (IRI) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Dr. Claudia Werker from Delft University of Technology interviews Dr. Irene Grossmann from the same university. Dr. Grossmann is both a medical surgeon and an expert in how to make health care safe for all patients. She shares with us that collecting and interpreting the right data is crucial for including all patients in medical research and health care. This requires changes in both how we do research and also how we teach our students.