Surgery Research Call - Applied Health Research in Surgery
The NIHR issued a call for research on the evaluation of technology-driven implanted or implantable medical devices, surgical procedures or surgical services on 23 February 2012. Six of the NIHR managed research programmes are participating. Read the press release.
This call for research proposals is a key component of the NIHR’s response to recognition of the need for an increase in research-based evidence related to surgical productivity and to patient outcomes:
· through supporting capacity building across a wide range of surgical disciplines and;
· increasing the volume of high-quality research on the effectiveness, delivery and organisation of surgery and surgical services.
The following six NIHR managed research programmes will be participating:
· Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME)
· Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR)
· Health Technology Assessment (HTA)
· Invention for Innovation (i4i)
· Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR)
· Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB).
Research proposals must be within the remit of one of the six participating programmes and applicants should carefully consider the remit described for each programme. Applications based on innovative study designs are particularly welcome. Specifically:
· Applications to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of new procedures that would obviate the need for surgery will be considered.
· Clinical trials involving ‘non-surgical’ interventions, e.g. interventional radiology, gastroenterology, cardiology, etc., must include a surgical intervention as a comparator.
· The inclusion of patient views and experiences are considered important by each participating programme.
· Proposals solely to explore epidemiological or pathophysiological issues around conditions conventionally treated with surgery are not in the remit of this call.
Application forms are now available from the participating programme's websites. Completed forms must be submitted by Friday 25 May 2012. Funding decisions will be made no later than the end of March 2013.
Specification Document
NIHR commissioned surgery related research
The NIHR Surgery Research Portfolio, provides a summary of previous commissioned surgery research across the six NIHR programmes participating in the Surgery Research Call.
NIHR Surgery Research Portfolio
Patient and Public Involvement
Research programmes need people with experience or an understanding of surgery to review the research proposals so that we can get a ‘first-hand experience’ perspective on the research applications.
Public involvement in reviewing proposals
Referees
Referees play a vital part in maintaining and improving the quality of the NIHR research programmes by supporting NIHR Boards, Committees and Panels in making funding recommendations. NIHR programmes invite at least four expert referees (and a service user) to comment on each research proposal.
Expert Referee Recruitment
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The FAQs provided should be read in conjunction with the programme specific FAQs which are available on the participating programme websites.
Surgery Research Call FAQs
Surgery Research Workshop
A workshop was held on 9 February 2012 to enable researchers to find out more about the support and funding provided by the NIHR for this call. Videos and presentations from the workshop are available to view.
Surgery Research Workshop