Research and Development
If you are keen to register your interest in being involved in an appropriate study, why not sign up to the local City of Research register?
It also contains a lot more information about research across Bradford, Airedale, Craven and Wharfedale.
Research is essential to generate new knowledge for the benefit of patients, the modernisation and promotion of services in the NHS and the development of patient care based on the best and most recent scientific evidence.
The Airedale Research Team covers research across a whole range of specialties. Our role in the trust is to ensure that we can offer as many patients as possible the opportunity to be part of a research study and we support them and their families throughout the whole of their research and treatment journeys.
Our role is to select the most appropriate studies for our Trust and for our patient population. Each study, run by a local Principal Investigator is set up, opened, run and monitored by members of our team in tandem with clinicians and they are the first point of contact for our research participants.
During the pandemic we have been especially busy running research studies designed to help find treatments for COVID-19, and now we are involved in long-COVID studies alongside all the research we do in other specialty areas.
Patients, carers, and the public are essential to our work. You are our greatest strength and we could not do our work without your help. Involving you in our work is one of our key aims.
Read about the many ways you can join in this effort.
Who can take part in research?
Why be part of research?
Why is research essential to what we do?
New treatments, technologies, care approaches and devices all need to be carefully and safely tested in real life healthcare environments. Clinical research in these environments is separately funded, adds value to patient care, and has economic value.
Patient access to Clinical Research is recognised in the NHS Constitution and features in the CQC’s annual Inpatient Experience Survey. It also has a high profile in the NHS Long Term Plan.
For researchers and members of staff
If you are planning a project, you must firstly decide whether it is deemed as research, audit or a service evaluation. The leaflet Defining Research issued by the national Research Ethics Service provides useful information to help you decide. If you are still unsure, the Research & Development (R&D) team at Airedale NHS Foundation trust will be able to help.
If your project is research it will usually require ethics approval and Trust R&D approval. The R&D team can help you by offering the following services:
- Advice and guidance on formulating your idea through to writing a protocol;
- Advice and guidance on navigating the R&D and ethics application process
- Information on the documentation you will need for your application;
- Advice on the local research governance process;
- Information on possible sources of funding;
- Advice about Research Passports, Honorary Contracts and Letters of Access.
All applications requiring ethics and R&D approval must be made via the Integrated Research Application Service website www.myresearchproject.org.uk. It is simple and free to open an account, and the R&D team can offer assistance in navigating the site if required.
To assist you, there is a Trust research application pack which you can download. This contains further information and a checklist to assist you with your application.
Performance in initiating and delivering research
The Government wants to see a dramatic and sustained improvement in the performance of The Government’s Plan for Growth, published in March 2011, with the aim of increasing the number of patients who have the opportunity to participate in research. As part of its research performance reporting to the Department of Health under the ‘Performance in initiating and delivering clinical research initiative’, or PID, the Foundation Trust is required to publish information regarding its performance in setting up and delivering research in a timely manner.
In order to meet the requirements of the Department of Health the Trust has to provide the following information on non-commercial trials:
- Information on all clinical trials which were open during the last 12 months
- Information regarding our performance in meeting the 70 day target for the time it takes from receiving a valid research application to the recruitment of our first patient to a trial.
We are also required to publish the following information regarding commercial contract clinical trials:
- Information on all commercial clinical trials closed during the last 12 months
- Information on our performance in recruiting the target number of patients to a trial within the target time.
This information is expected to be publicly available and the performance of the Trust against the National Institute for Health Research benchmarks will be published along with similar information from other organisations.
You can access the performance tables for Airedale NHS Foundation Trust by clicking on the link below:
Please note that the information published in these documents represents only the clinical trials meeting the criteria set down by the Department of Health. There are many other research studies running in the Trust which are not published here. If you want further information on the wide range of studies we are running please contact the R&D Department.
Read the tables for submissions for performance in initiating and delivering research.
Our research statement
The Research and Development Operational Capability Statement (RDOCS) is a new standard document for organisations working within the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Support Services framework. The NIHR expects that all Organisations, such as Airedale NHS Foundation trust, who are intending to sponsor or participate in research have an RDOCS which is regularly reviewed.
The RDOCS summarises the facilities and research capability of the Organisation, and also enables others to avoid proposing studies that the Organisation is unable to support.
The RDOCS is regularly reviewed and updated and is available from the research team on request. Email anhsft.researchanddevelopment@nhs.net
