Improving Performance in Initiating and Delivering Clinical Research

Date: 5 June 2018

Statement from the Department of Health & Social Care

“The Government is committed to creating the best environment for clinical trials and achieving the ambition set out in the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy to make the UK a top tier global hub for biomedical and clinical research and medical innovation. This includes a commitment to increase the number of clinical trials, improve clinical trial capabilities and reduce the time it takes to initiate and deliver studies, ensuring we are supporting the most innovative trials and meeting the needs of the Life Sciences Industry.

As part of a package of support to improve performance in initiating and delivering clinical research, the National Institute for Health Research will continue to require providers of NHS services in receipt of NIHR funding to measure and publish their performance in initiating and delivering clinical research. This requirement is also being reinforced through the NHS standard contract, as outlined in NHS England’s ‘12 Actions to Support and Apply Research in the NHS’, as a measure of the importance of clinical trial performance to the NHS, patients and the Life Sciences Industry. 

The 70 day benchmark for clinical trials, which was introduced as part of the publication requirements, has played an important role in driving up trial performance in the NHS in England.  However, we have had feedback from the Life Sciences Industry that publication of performance data using the agreed Minimum Data Set, rather than the 70 day benchmark, will now better meet the needs of industry partners in research site selection and allow sponsors to view the most appropriate timelines for each clinical trial. In response to this, we are now removing the 70 day benchmark for performance in initiating clinical research.

We are also initiating work to streamline the collection of performance data from NHS Trusts, and to improve data quality and usefulness.

We will continue to monitor performance data and feedback from the Life Science Industry as this change is embedded.

The NIHR Central Commissioning Facility Clinical Trial Performance team have updated the PID guidance documents for Q1 18-19 to reflect the changes in reporting and publishing requirements. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact them at CTP@nihr.ac.uk.

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