Setting up and running research studies

This page covers the main areas to think about when you are setting up a research study.

Seek advice on how to run your study

The NIHR Study Support Service can help you plan, set up and deliver your research to time and target in the NHS, public health and social care settings.

Contact the study support service around the time your study has been shortlisted by a funder. This will ensure you get the full range of relevant support for you and your study.

They can advise on:

  • whether you can get delivery support from the NIHR Research Delivery Network
  • other aspects of delivering your study, like attributing costs or recruiting participants

Find out more about the:

Study Support Service

Additionally, the UKCRC Registered Clinical Trials Unit Network offers a one-day workshop designed for current and aspiring Chief Investigators, to empower you to excel in the conduct of clinical trials through effective collaboration with a clinical trials unit.

Develop your research team

Make sure your research team has the appropriate expertise. It needs to include:

  • project management
  • patient and public involvement
  • statistics, academics
  • health economics
  • clinical or subject (where applicable)

Be Part of Research is an online service that helps members of the public understand what research is, what taking part might involve, as well as helping people find research studies and volunteer to take part.

Please make sure you read the guidance on roles and responsibilities before involving members of the public.  

Collaborate

You may want to partner or collaborate with the life sciences industry or charities.

You can also engage and collaborate with experts in our research infrastructure, to develop and create opportunities for your own research. Our researchers have expertise in:

  • experimental medicine
  • early-phase translational research
  • medtech
  • in vitro diagnostics
  • patient safety
  • implementation research

Find research locations suitable for your study

Our Study Support Service can help you to quickly and efficiently identify suitable research locations across the United Kingdom.

Contact your Regional Research Delivery Network to get started. We will use our national network, alongside colleagues in devolved administrations, to gather expressions of interest from investigators at sites throughout the NHS, including primary, social and community care settings.

You can review the responses and engage directly with research locations for more in-depth selection discussions.

To access this support, please contact your Regional Research Delivery Network directly:

Study Support Service contacts

If you work for a life sciences organisation, please contact our Industry Support Team

Queries regarding access to research infrastructure support outside of England, should be directed to the relevant national coordinating functions:

Access facilities for early stage research

We fund research infrastructure to support researchers with the delivery of early stage experimental medicine research studies. Our funding goes towards purpose built facilities in the country’s leading NHS hospitals and universities and a skilled workforce of researchers and clinical trial support staff.

Our facilities and expertise in research delivery are available to researchers who want to deliver experimental medicine research.

NIHR Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs) are dedicated and purpose built facilities in NHS hospitals where researchers can deliver early phase clinical trials. The 22 facilities around England have cutting-edge technologies and access to patients.

Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs)

NIHR CRFs have skilled clinical trial support staff who can support complex or high intensity experimental research. The facilities are supported by the UK Clinical Research Facility Network, which provides best practice guidance and tools to ensure each CRF delivers clinical trials of the highest standard.

The Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMCs) are a network of world-leading scientists and clinicians who bring together expertise and techniques to support the delivery of early phase cancer trials. The NIHR funds 14 ECMCs across England in close partnership with Cancer Research UK.

Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMCs)

Streamline your study set-up

Our study support service team can liaise with you and make recommendations to help sites open as efficiently as possible. As part of the Health Research Authority (HRA) approval process, all NHS sites are required to confirm that they have capacity and capability to deliver your research.  If you have any queries please contact your Regional Research Delivery Network (RRDN).

Study delivery and performance: access the support you need

Through the Research Delivery Network (RDN), we support research sponsors and delegates with research study delivery and performance. Please email us to request this service: supportmystudy@nihr.ac.uk

For studies that are included on the NIHR RDN Portfolio we offer support to:

  • streamline your study set-up through our national network and links with sites
  • ensure sites open as quickly and efficiently as possible
  • provide support and advice to sponsors/delegates to help you reach study recruitment targets 

The types of delivery and performance support we can help with are: 

  • Supporting study-wide planning activities - eg we can help you identify extra research sites including Patient Identification Centres (PICs)
  • Research delivery advice - eg we can advise you on recruitment strategies and suggest recruitment settings you may not have considered in the original protocol. These include regional care pathways, NHS support services, investigators, capabilities and explore digital recruitment methods
  • Discuss site or whole study issues affecting study delivery
  • Advice on engaging with local communities, primary care and wider care settings such as schools, prisons, care homes etc
  • Clinical advice - eg assessment of study deliverability in the UK, recommendations of recruitment methods and pathways, study design considerations
  • Support to overcome barriers, delivery challenges or other types of requests

Access data, patient cohorts or samples support

We fund a number of initiatives to help researchers access health data, identify participants for research, and access, store and analyse research samples.

Access to data

The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) provides access to high-quality, anonymised primary care data for past and future public health and clinical studies. These include outcomes research, epidemiology and randomised controlled trials.

The primary care data are linked to a range of other health-related data to provide a longitudinal, representative UK population health dataset.

CPRD data and services can be highly tailored to meet your specific research needs.

CPRD website

The NIHR Health Informatics Collaborative (HIC) provides access to high-quality, longitudinal secondary care datasets for translational research. Datasets are available in a number of clinical areas:

  • cardiovascular medicine 
  • cancer: breast, colorectal, lung, ovarian and prostate
  • critical care
  • hearing loss
  • infectious diseases
  • hearing loss
  • musculoskeletal
  • renal transplantation
  • viral hepatitis

HIC themes

ScanMedicine is a comprehensive database of clinical trials and medical device information. Researchers can use this database to gain an overview of the research landscape in their area of interest, to support planning research and building collaborations.

You can simultaneously search 11 major health databases across the globe for up-to-date information on what new medicines, devices and diagnostics are on the horizon. It was developed by the NIHR Innovation Observatory.

ScanMedicine website

The Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) and the Dementia CRIS (D-CRIS), based at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, provide rapid access to pseudonymised mental health clinical records held in NHS systems.

This allows researchers to search structured and unstructured free-form clinical data, to swiftly investigate hypotheses and define anonymised patient cohorts.

In addition, some patients have given pre-consent to be contacted about research projects from information in their records, allowing targeted recruitment for trials and observational studies.

CRIS website

Access to patient cohorts

NIHR BioResource

The NIHR BioResource is a panel of over 200,000 healthy volunteers and patients with common and rare diseases who are willing to be approached to participate in research studies investigating the links between genes, the environment, health and disease.

The NIHR BioResource can help you identify and recruit study participants who have been characterised by genotype and phenotype.

NIHR BioResource

Access, storage and analysis of research samples

The UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Tissue Directory is a free online resource that catalogues the different types of human sample resources across the UK. For example, biobank, cohort, biorepository, clinical trial.

Researchers can search the directory by gender, age, and disease, to either find banked samples or resources that can acquire bespoke collections.

UKCRC Tissue Directory

The NIHR Biosample Centre provides a high quality, high capacity service for  collection, processing, storage and analysis of biological samples from biomedical research.

NIHR Biosample Centre

The MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre has world-class metabolic profiling techniques for advancing academic and clinical research in personalised medicine, diagnostics and nutrition.

The centre offers a wide range of analysis services to researchers, from broad profiling untargeted assays through to targeted assays. These services are offered on a collaborative project basis or as a fee-for-service offering.

MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre