King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH) has a long history of ground-breaking research in the fields of maternal-fetal medicine, obstetrics, midwifery, perinatology, neonatology, perinatal mental health and gynaecology. As the State’s preeminent teaching and research hospital around women’s health, KEMH boasts a raft of internationally recognised clinical and biomedical researchers with successful and long-established links with centres and researchers in Australia and globally.

KEMH patients can participate in research projects to help improve health care and develop new, safer and more effective therapies for women and their infants.

Research at KEMH is funded by WA Health, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Channel 7 Telethon Trust, Cancer Council of WA and a variety of other funding agencies. For more than 40 years, research at KEMH has been facilitated by the Women and Infants Research Foundation (WIRF) (external site). The Foundation is an independent, accredited research organisation whose mission is to conduct, enable and promote high quality research that improves the health of women and babies in Australia and beyond.

Research at KEMH produces around 150 publications per year in medical journals and textbooks. Clinical research carried out at KEMH has contributed to major advances in the prevention of preterm birth (www.thewholeninemonths.com.au (external site), use of antenatal steroid therapy (external site) for women in preterm labour, the use of probiotics (external site) in the treatment of preterm babies, and the accurate assessment of problematic anxiety (external site) in pre- and postpartum mothers. The Women and Newborn Health Service (WNHS) is a research partner of the Western Australian Health Translation Network (external site).