Professor Shaun Holt


Professor Shaun Holt is the founder of Clinicanz, New Zealand’s only clinical trials Site Management Organization. Previously, he was the founder of P3 Research, an independent clinical trials unit based in Wellington and Tauranga, and Research Review, a company that produces regular reviews of the medical literature for health professionals. He is Ex-Medical Director of Clinical Trials in the Wellington Asthma Research Group. Shaun holds Pharmacy and Medicine degrees, has been the Principal Investigator in over 50 clinical trials and has over 80 publications in the medical literature. He is Honorary Research Fellow at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, an Advisor to the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation, a regular contributor on TVOne's Breakfast programme and national radio shows and lectures at the Victoria University of Wellington. 

Professor Shaun Holt
Clinicanz, Medical Research Institute of NZ, Victoria University of Wellington
http://flavors.me/shaunholt 
holtshaun@gmail.com 
Phone: 029 200 11 11

 

How to ACT to Improve Asthma Outcomes
 
Sunday, 8 August 2010 Start 7:30am Duration: 45mins Chancellor 1
There is a major gap between what can be achieved with modern asthma management and what is currently being achieved. One of the main reasons for this is a lack of recognition of asthma severity and the requirement for more effective treatment - it is only through identifying those patients with uncontrolled asthma that appropriate treatment will be prescribed.

In part the difficulty in the assessment of control relates to the lack of a clear therapeutic target in asthma. This contrasts with other chronic diseases such as hypertension or diabetes where treatment is prescribed in order to achieve a definite therapeutic target. One approach to this difficulty is to develop a simple test which is a screening tool to identify patients with poorly controlled asthma.

The Asthma Control Test (ACT) has been developed and validated for this purpose. It involves patients completing a simple written questionnaire of five questions, from which a score (out of 25) is obtained. It has been shown that the ACT is a simple, quick and accurate tool for assessing asthma control and it has been shown to be responsive to changes in asthma control over time.