Published: 30 March 2020
The NIHR has published its latest Annual Report highlighting its achievements in 2018/19.
The report celebrates all the NIHR support and funding that has the most impact on our health and social care system. It details our ground-breaking research, and often world-firsts, and the talents and expertise within our research community that deliver these findings.
Over 100 of our major research achievements are featured in the report, organised under each of the NIHR's five core workstreams and our Global Health Research programme. Highlights include:
Funding, supporting and delivering high-quality research
We awarded over £317 million of funding to 334 research projects, increasing investment into research programmes by £91 million from the previous year.
Engaging and involving patients, carers and the public
1,015,487 people took part in NIHR-supported health and social
care research studies (an increase of 21.5% from the previous year). A total of 356 members of the public reviewed 953 research funding proposals, and 109 members of the public served on our funding committees and advisory boards.
Attracting, training and supporting the best researchers
We funded 548 new personal training awards to develop and support the next generation of researchers and leaders, and 3,560 people received NIHR-funded training awards to develop the skills they need to meet the nation’s health and care needs.
Investing in world-class infrastructure and a skilled delivery workforce
Our research infrastructure supported 21,601 research studies in 18/19. We funded or part-funded over 11,000 front-line research delivery staff working throughout the NHS, including 4,455 research nurses in the NIHR Clinical Research Network delivery workforce.
Partnering with other public funders, charities and industry
We worked successfully with partners in the UK’s world-leading life sciences sector - our centres and facilities supported 3,689 commercial studies and collaborated on a further 1,149 studies, while our Clinical Research Network supported 1,523 commercial studies.
Global health
We awarded £39 million to 20 new Global Health Research Groups to address global health challenges affecting people living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) using Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding.
Read more about each of these core workstreams in the full annual report