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An investigative study into the evaluation of disease and cost burdens of overdiagnosis has聽been announced as one of several new research projects within Macquarie University to be awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant.

The Australian government announced that the project 鈥淒efining disease: addressing the聽problem of overdiagnosis鈥�, lead by Professor of Clinical Ethics Wendy Rogers, has received a聽Future Fellowship worth $820,156 over four years.

鈥淭he project has quite ambitious aims, which are to develop an account of disease that will help聽to guide practitioners and policy makers about which abnormalities or conditions should be聽labelled as disease,鈥� said Professor Rogers.

The ensuing account of disease will make a practical contribution to growing international聽concern about asymptomatic people being diagnosed and treated for conditions that will not聽cause any health problems (overdiagnosis).聽The research will provide grounds for evaluating disease claims. Results will reduce the harm聽caused by people receiving treatment that they do not require, make a practical contribution to聽debates about the scope of health care, and yield findings that can help to reduce the cost burdens associated with overdiagnosis.

鈥淭here has been quite a lot of attention on overdiagnosis, which includes a range of situations in聽which people without symptoms are investigated and treated, for what are probably harmless聽abnormalities. At the same time, the thresholds for defining diseases such as type 2 diabetes or聽chronic kidney disease have been falling, so that more and more people are being diagnosed. "So聽we get the situation in which otherwise healthy and asymptomatic people are turned into

patients by performing investigations, allocating diagnoses or providing treatments that do not聽improve patients鈥� health, and may actually harm them.

鈥淚n this situation, it's important to be clear about what we mean when we say a condition is adisease, but at the moment, there is little agreement on this. So there are philosophical questions聽to answer here, about defining disease, as well as ethical questions about the benefits and聽harms of defining disease in different ways, and the costs of treating people who are unlikely to聽benefit,鈥� said Professor Rogers.

A total of 34 Macquarie University research projects were successful in receiving a grant,聽including eight Future Fellowships ($5, 996, 004 total funding), 21 Discovery Projects ($7, 466,683 total funding), and five Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards (DECRAs) ($1, 787, 254total funding)