Clinical practice as a site of discovery.
Merge Health is an integrative and functional medicine clinic — and a working research environment. Our practitioners are clinicians and investigators, and the questions we pursue are the ones our patients bring through the door.
Complex chronic illness sits awkwardly in the existing evidence base.
Patients with overlapping presentations — persistent fatigue, mast cell activation, autonomic dysregulation, gut dysfunction, hormonal disruption, chemical and food sensitivity — often arrive after years of investigation without a coherent explanation. The literature tends to study these conditions in isolation, in narrowly selected cohorts, over short time horizons. Real patients present with several at once.
That combination generates a body of clinical data that does not exist elsewhere in this form — and which cannot be produced from the published literature alone.
Research is what we do deliberately, not what happens by accident.
Five principles govern every research stream at Merge Health.
Systematic, not incidental
Data is captured against defined protocols, using standardised instruments, at defined points in the patient journey, and recorded in structured clinical systems.
Longitudinal, not snapshot
Our programmes are designed as continuing collection and analysis rather than single-year studies. Chronic illness resolves — or fails to — over years, and our research horizon reflects that.
Cohort-level, not case-level
The care we deliver to any individual patient is care. Research begins where we aggregate, compare and analyse data across cohorts to test whether a pattern holds.
Hypothesis-driven
Each stream begins with a stated hypothesis whose outcome cannot be known in advance from current knowledge, and proceeds through a documented sequence of measurement, observation, analysis and conclusion.
Multi-disciplinary
Findings are reviewed across our practitioner group — functional medicine, integrative medicine, naturopathy, nutrition and health coaching — rather than through a single professional lens.
Two programmes: what's driving the illness, and what shifts it.
One investigative, one applied. Both run as ongoing, multi-year work.
Biological drivers and biomarkers of chronic illness and fatigue
An investigative programme examining the measurable biological signatures underlying complex chronic presentations, and whether those signatures can discriminate between conditions that present similarly.
Current streams of enquiry
- Urinary nitric oxide as a marker of dietary and nutritional intervention response
- Drivers of mast cell activation identified through structured systems assessment and mineral analysis
- The relationship between prior infection and mast cell activation presentations
- Omega-6 to omega-3 balance and its association with mood and inflammatory markers
- Prevalence and co-occurrence of Gilbert's Syndrome, Hashimoto's Disease and mast cell activation
- Associations between mast cell activation and reproductive, fertility and hormonal markers
- Mast cell activation in high-oestrogen inflammatory reproductive states
- Diagnostic discrimination between perimenopause, menopause and mast cell activation presentations
- Validation of Autonomic Response Testing as a clinical assessment tool against objective measures
Novel therapeutic protocols for chronic illness
An applied programme evaluating whether structured, staged therapeutic protocols produce measurable outcomes across cohorts of complex patients — and which components of a protocol carry the effect.
Current streams of enquiry
- The NeuroWell group programme for nervous system regulation
- Sequenced psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) protocols
- Structured gut rebalance protocols
- Supported withdrawal and deprescribing protocols
A consistent assessment battery, applied across our patient population.
Objective measures are paired with validated and adapted patient-reported instruments covering psychological distress, mindfulness-based self-efficacy, sleep quality and dietary intake, together with structured systems assessment scoring. Pathology is commissioned by Merge Health through accredited Australian laboratories.
Participation never changes the care you receive.
Clinical decisions are made on clinical grounds. Always.
De-identified for analysis
Data used in our research programmes is de-identified before it is aggregated or analysed at cohort level.
Consent is informed
Patients are told how their clinical data may contribute to cohort-level research, and consent is obtained.
Held securely
Data is stored in secure clinical record systems in accordance with Australian privacy law and applicable professional obligations.
You can opt out
If you would prefer your data be excluded from research analysis, raise it with your practitioner at any time. It will not affect your care.
Questions about how your data is used? Talk to your practitioner, or contact us directly — we're happy to walk you through it.
Our current programmes are observational. The next phase is prospective.
Today we analyse clinical data generated in the ordinary course of practice — systematically, and at scale.
Formally designed interventional studies
We are working towards prospective studies conducted to Australian and international standards for clinical research, under the oversight of a registered Human Research Ethics Committee. Our present programmes are building the baseline data, measurement infrastructure and hypotheses that phase will test.
Extension to paediatric cohorts
Early data suggests the same biological drivers may be identifiable at a much earlier stage of illness. We are scoping how this work could be extended to younger patients.
Our research team.
Clinicians first. Every hypothesis on this page came out of a consulting room.
Kate McCandless
Managing Director. Functional medicine and naturopathy. Co-lead, Autonomic Response Testing validation.
Stephanie Gadsden
Functional medicine and naturopathy. Co-lead, Autonomic Response Testing validation.
Dr Tania Ash
Integrative medicine. Lead, sequenced psychoneuroimmunology protocols.
Samantha Van Dort
Naturopathy. Lead, reproductive and fertility health research stream.
Sarah Bakker
Health coaching and patient advocacy. Clinical data classification.
Leah Hunt
Wellness coaching and nutrition.
Researchers, clinicians, laboratories — get in touch.
We welcome contact from organisations interested in collaboration, and from patients who'd like to understand more about our research programmes.
Contact our research team