Over 100 of the nation’s most accomplished clinical researchers gathered to discuss their work at a conference for NIHR Senior Investigators this week.

NIHR Senior Investigators (SIs) are the most outstanding leaders of applied people and patient based health and social care research in England. There are 163 Senior Investigators, The first 100 were appointed in March 2008, and a further 63 were appointed in March 2009.  

The first day of the conference was designed specifically for newly appointed NIHR Senior Investigators to give them a grounding in the breadth of NIHR’s work across England. 

Professor Dame Sally C. Davies, Director General of Research and Development, Department of Health, praised their work to find innovative solutions to a wide range of medical conditions. She also stressed the need for NIHR Senior Investigators to be more focused on ensuring their research is actively taken up and used by health professionals in the NHS.   

In particular, Sally Davies spoke of the need to embed clinical research as part of the culture and ethos of the National Health Service. Senior Investigators had a key role to play in helping NHS clinicians and managers support new research as well as understand and act on the evidence from completed research projects that demonstrate improved treatments for patients.  

Director of the NIHR Stroke Research Network, Professor Gary Ford described how NIHR funds and supports clinical trials and other studies, with the number of patients entering trials doubling in the past three years as a result of more research being funded and more patients taking part.  

Director of the NIHR HTA Programme, Tom Walley outlined the progress NIHR has made in creating more coherent arrangements for research approvals in England. The new system had worked particularly well for the latest round of swine flu research. Collaboration from all parties resulted in 14 research proposals being cleared within record time. From initial discussions around the need to commission specific swine-flu research on 4 June, an open call for swine-flu research had been launched on 19 June attracting 170 expressions of interest within days. By 19 August 14 projects had received NIHR funding. First results from the projects are expected before Christmas.  Ethics approval had taken 18 days, research governance 19 days, MHRA approval 11 days. NHS Trusts too had responded extremely rapidly, allowing 100 hospitals to be approved within five days. Over 1000 children had been signed up to take part in trials on children in record time.   

This very urgent response by researchers, the NHS and industry to the threat of a swine flu epidemic proved that the system created by NIHR does enable rapid approval of new research. This will benefit the academic research community, industry, NHS and, most importantly, patients.   

The afternoon session on the first day was followed by a dinner for all delegates, with a pre-dinner talk by the Chief Executive of HEFCE Sir Alan Langlands, and an after dinner speech by Professor Lord Ara Darzi from Imperial College London. 

The second day of the conference kicked off with a welcome from Conference Chair Dr Russell Hamilton, Director of R&D at the Department of Health.   

The keynote speech by Sally Davies focused on Research as a key to Quality and Productivity. It was critical, she said, that NIHR was able to offer evidence of research leading to better health and care for patients.  It was important for NIHR, on behalf of Government to highlight quality gains from the research process to justify expenditure of public money. It was also important for NIHR to fund only the highest quality peer reviewed research as part of our ambition to strengthen the UK’s position as a world class centre for patient focused clinical research. Having streamlined systems for research approvals, and some of the best researchers in the world would attract increased investment from global pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical devices companies, supporting NIHR’s ambition to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research.   

To illustrate the sort of high quality research NIHR funds, Professor Freddy Hamdy from Oxford University outlined his work leading a long-term multi-million Pound research programme to examine the treatment of prostate cancer. The project has so far tested over 110,000 men, 63 per cent of whom have entered randomised trials.  

Professor Patrick Sissons, Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge outlined the role of Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) in the new innovation landscape. He was followed by Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, Chief Executive University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust who gave an NHS perspective of how the NHS can build partnerships with research academics and industry in the new landscape. 

Workshop sessions after lunch on the second day focused on the importance of communications in research, of involving patients and the public, the NIHR leadership programme and new landscape created by Health Innovation and Education Clusters (HIECs), AHSCs and the NIHR. 

Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, chair designate for the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and Chair of the UK Research Integrity Office spoke about innovation, research and regulation, followed by Professor Paul Matthews, Vice President for imaging, genetics, and neurology in clinical pharmacology and discovery medicine at Glaxo Smith Kline on the innovation pathway from academia into industry and the NHS.