On 19 September 2024 the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) published a briefing paper on embedding research in the NHS.
The briefing outlined why research and innovation must be a central part of the solution in the NHS 10-year health plan, and how we can ensure that research is embedded effectively in the NHS by prioritising three areas:
- supporting a thriving clinical research workforce
- maximising opportunities for everyone to take part in research
- making it easy to deliver research throughout the NHS.
We welcome the briefing from AMRC and our Director of Approvals Service, Janet Messer has responded below.
Janet Messer, Director of Approvals Service“We were pleased to see the helpful briefing from AMRC following on from the publication of Lord Darzi’s review last week. It provides a further reminder of the importance of research in the NHS.
“We agree that charities play a vital role in health and social care research and the AMRC briefing highlights the wide range of benefits non-commercially funded research brings to UK.
“The briefing highlights three priorities to ensure research is embedded effectively in the NHS and the Health Research Authority is already working with our partners to support work in these key areas.
“We are pleased to see that the HRA’s work with others to champion the importance of diversity and inclusion in research has been recognised. The UK’s diverse population, alongside the well-established research infrastructure in the NHS, provides a unique opportunity for properly representative research to be carried out. This is a key way to tackling health inequalities and to support this we will soon be asking for feedback on our draft inclusion and diversity plan and guidance which is designed to support the research community to design inclusive research.
“We are also working with others to clarify how data can be used to identify and invite people to take part in research, to help increase recruitment to clinical studies and trials.
“Our aim is to make it easy to do research that people can trust. This briefing makes it clear that more needs to be done to make it easier to deliver research in the NHS, and we are committed to doing everything we can to support this. We are working with others on a range of actions to speed up the set-up of research in the NHS. Across the NHS we have already made a difference to the set-up of commercial research through the National Contract Value Review (NCVR) process which removes the duplication in costing by individual NHS organisations. Thanks to NCVR in 2023 we saw that participating commercial study set-up times were over 100 days quicker compared to pre-pandemic levels.
“We understand that the research community is keen to know about the upcoming changes to Clinical Trials Legislation and we have committed to ensuring that we share guidance well in advance of any changes coming into effect so that everyone understands what they need to do.”