The UK government has introduced a new research strategy, designed to make it easier to carry out research in the NHS in England, with a series of proposals published this week. The proposals aim to establish the NHS as an internationally recognised centre of research excellence, with a commitment to spend more than £650m ($1150m; €950m) a year on high quality patient based research and development.
"The aim is to enable the NHS to become an organisation that supports outstanding individuals (both leaders and collaborators), working in world-class facilities (both NHS and university), conducting leading-edge research," the document says.
The strategy’s recommendations are designed to solve the problems faced by researchers working in the NHS, including bureaucratic blocks to clinical research, allocation of research funding on a historical basis, barriers to the collection and use of patients’ data, and lack of career paths for clinical academics.
The recommendations also aim to help the NHS in England become a world leader in doing clinical research in partnership with, and for, industry.
Sally Davies, director of research and development at the Department of Health, said, "Our new health research strategy is designed to tackle the challenges we collectively identified and to put in place the changes that are essential to creating a health research system where the NHS supports outstanding individuals, working in world class facilities, conducting leading edge research focused on the needs of patients and the public."
The first step is to develop new structures to improve the coordination of research in the NHS. A virtual national research facility, the National Institute for Health Research, will be set up to provide a framework to position, manage, and maintain the research, research staff, and infrastructure of research in the NHS. It will include all NHS trusts, universities, centres, information and ethics systems, and staff working in NHS research.
On a second level, clinical research networks will be set up to cover the population of England to support research across all diseases and areas of patient need. They will include new networks in mental health, diabetes, medicines for children, stroke, and dementias and neurodegenerative diseases and clinical genetics, following the model used to establish the National Cancer Research Network.
A Primary Care Research Network will be established to improve research opportunities in this sector, together with a National School for Primary Care Research to facilitate clinical trials and other studies in primary care.
A key aim of the networks will be to support and conduct randomised controlled trials and other studies for commercial and non-commercial sponsors. This will include pivotal licensing studies undertaken for industry, to be paid for at full costs.
A centre to act as a clinical trial clearing house will be set up to act as a "one stop shop." This will simplify discussions with industry and other research partners, raise the public profile of clinical research and the health benefits of participating, and act as a matching service between willing volunteers and clinical trials in appropriate circumstances.
Research funding will no longer be allocated on an historical basis, which was widely considered to fail in reflecting the quality or relevance of research activity. Instead, several mechanisms will support research at different levels. Funding will be available on a per capita population basis to ensure that all areas of the country have resources to take part in clinical research.
Further funding will be allocated on an open competitive basis to ensure that research at centres of excellence can continue. Finally, additional funding will be available to organisations considered outstanding in international research terms.
To reduce the paperwork associated with research, the strategy will streamline administrative procedures associated with regulation, governance, reporting, research administration, and approvals.
Centres of expertise in research and development management will be set up, closely linked to the NHS research networks, to coordinate research management and resources.
(See editorial, p 247.)
The proposals, Best Research For Best Health: A New National Health Research Strategy , is available at www.dh.gov.uk/researchstrategy.