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NIHR Covid-19 Understanding and Elimination-Trials Implementation Panel (CUE-TIP): Terms of Reference

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Published: 26 July 2021

Version: 1.0 July 2021

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Purpose

The NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) has convened the NIHR Covid-19 Understanding and Elimination-Trials Implementation Panel (CUE-TIP) Group to provide cross-specialty oversight for the delivery of studies relating to COVID-19. The group provides strategic clinical oversight across the entire COVID-19 Portfolio, which are addressed through Strategic Portfolio Oversight Sessions.

The primary purpose of the CUE-TIP Group is to address the items listed below:

  1. Take an active role in developing action plans to deliver the previously badged Urgent Public Health studies to time and target
  2. Provide clinical and non-clinical intelligence for the set-up and delivery of studies relating to COVID-19
  3. Provide strategic oversight across the entire COVID-19 portfolio, in order to:
    1. Identify common challenges, barriers and areas of inequality, ensuring lessons learned are rapidly circulated across the Network
    2. Propose and plan solutions to issues identified
    3. Understand how studies fit across the landscape and identify areas for development
    4. Capture the value of studies and their outputs, ensuring important outcomes from these studies are shared as good news stories and highlighted for communications activities
    5. Capture the investment made by NIHR and other stakeholders
  4. Provide a mechanism to enable development opportunities for those areas of the COVID-19 portfolio that are currently lacking in studies
  5. Oversight and input into key CUE-TIP supporting projects including: COVID-19 Consenting Initiative, NIHR Aerosol Generating Procedures Group, NIHR Transmission Of COVID-19 in Schools Group, NIHR Associate Principal Investigator Scheme & COVID-19 Common Dataset.

Scope

  1. The remit of this group extends to all areas of the UK and as such membership from the Devolved Nations has been sought, as well as representation from NHS England, UK Health Security Agency, UK Clinical Trials Network and NIHR Infrastructure and Programmes. Clinical expertise has been drawn from the relevant National Specialty Groups. Membership will be continually reviewed to ensure that appropriate specialties are represented.
  2. CUE-TIP remit is defined as: All COVID-19 research on the NIHR CRN portfolio that will lead to the understanding and elimination of COVID-19, as well as enabling patients to live with the effects of COVID-19 by minimising the long-term effects of the disease are within scope.

For clarity, studies eligible for inclusion in the CUE-TIP portfolio are defined as:

  1. Primarily* investigating COVID-19 as the clinical disease area.
  2. Taking place in any setting and will be treating, preventing, diagnosing, collecting samples/data or assessing the impact of COVID-19.

* The majority of participants are being researched for a purpose relating to COVID-19, therefore studies where COVID-19 is a small sub-study are out of scope.

Meeting arrangements

  1. Meetings will be confidential and all members will be requested to sign a confidentiality agreement if one is not already in place
  2. Meetings will be convened monthly, with the ability to arrange ad hoc meetings if urgent issues arise
  3. Papers are provided ~24 hours in advance, although given the fast paced nature of the situation it may not always be possible to adhere to this requirement