Five key themes underpinning the government’s vision
1. Clinical research embedded in the NHS
To create a research-positive culture in which all health and care staff feel empowered to support and participate in clinical research as part of their job.
2. Patient-centred research
To make access to and participation in research as easy as possible for everyone across the UK, including rural, diverse and under-served populations.
3. Streamlined, efficient and innovative research
So the UK is seen as the best place in the world to conduct fast, efficient and cutting-edge clinical research.
4. Research enabled by data and digital tools
To ensure the UK has the most advanced and data-enabled clinical research environment in the world, which capitalises on our unique data assets to improve the health and care of patients across the UK and beyond.
5. A sustainable and supported research workforce
Which offers rewarding opportunities and exciting careers for all healthcare and research staff of all professional backgrounds – across the length and breadth of commercial and non-commercial research.
Seven areas for action, to break down traditional barriers and deliver a patient-centred and pro-innovation clinical research environment
1. Improving the speed and efficiency of study set-up
This includes expediting costing, contracting and approvals, all areas we know can often delay progress. And we’re going further, to actively speed up research approval and delivery. For example, the Health Research Authority has launched a rapid ethics review pilot for global clinical and phase I trials, which aims to halve the time to provide a final opinion on research applications.
2. Building upon digital platforms to deliver clinical research
We have seen the power of digital research platforms during COVID-19, with NHS DigiTrials supporting the rapid delivery of vaccine and therapeutic trials. We now need to build on these successes and increase the capacity for digital platforms to improve the delivery of research. This will help address other important population health burdens, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, reduce the burden on frontline health and care staff and support research delivery for cutting-edge treatments and technologies, including genomic medicines.
3. Increasing the use of innovative research designs
We are seeing study teams across the country adapt research delivery methods to take advantage of virtual processes and technologies in the current environment. We need these new approaches to be adopted across commercial and non-commercial research in future. This will make research easier for people to access and will also release capacity within the NHS. By helping to deliver the best research where it is best suited, we will continue to support innovative studies for cutting-edge treatments and technologies across all phases, for all therapies and for all conditions.
4. Aligning our research programmes and processes with the needs of the UK health and care system
We are looking to the future health needs of the population and the health service – to better understand the demands that will be placed on it and to ensure we identify the research that is most needed to support patients and the NHS across the UK.
5. Improving visibility and making research delivery matter to the NHS
We are engaging with health and care staff and leadership to embed the idea that clinical research is an essential and rewarding part of effective patient care. And we are working to create the incentives and levers in the system to ensure staff feel empowered to support research and see the benefits it brings to their patients. This means capturing, monitoring and promoting research activity across the NHS – including the number of referrals to research studies, the number of participants recruited and good data collection in electronic health records. And it means building research into healthcare regulator requirements for NHS bodies and revalidation requirements for doctors and nurses.
6. Making research more diverse and more relevant to the whole UK
By building on centres of excellence, such as the Centre for BME Health in Leicester, we will increase support for research in more diverse and under-served populations. We will also ensure that, wherever possible, research is delivered where the patients with the greatest need are located. This means increasing the capacity and confidence to deliver research in areas with the highest healthcare burdens and levels of deprivation.
7. Strengthening public, patient and service user involvement in research
We will expand support to help sponsors easily access patient groups who can support the development of their studies. We will ensure publicly funded research models the highest standards of public, patient and service user involvement in research design and delivery and continue to partner with other funders to improve diversity and engagement across all clinical research.