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June 2020 Newsletter

Date: 30 June 2020

Forum Round up 

In a month where we have seen the first results so swiftly delivered from a platform trial that has involved over 175 NHS organisations and many members of the wider Forum community it is right that we use this newsletter to recognise the extraordinary efforts of all involved. The entire R&D workforce has shown exceptional drive and commitment to the research endeavour over these past months and the Forum, as your Professional Network, continues to work for each of you.

The support that Forum members provide to each other has proved invaluable over the past weeks. Despite all the current daily work challenges many have decided to continue to meet virtually in hangouts, in groups or via social media platforms.

The value in learning from shared experience has never been more plain and the commitment that members have made to each other as well as to the ongoing development of national policy and guidance, makes being part of this wonderful community such a rewarding one.

In this regard a few core members have been working with partners to pull together some exciting plans for free virtual events and opportunities to enable more of us to join together as we move into the next phase of this pandemic response. More solutions are also coming via the new Forum website in addition to the launch of our Forum online classrooms and RDF21 in Newcastle next May.

This newsletter highlights all of the activities undertaken by members of the Forum community over the past month plus the latest in policy and regulatory updates, shared resources and the opportunity for you to feed in your comments.

Thank you for all that you are doing.

Have your say
Re-start ‘temperature check’ feeds national advisory board and NIHR Primary Care specialty leads group. 

Weekly hangouts, group meetings and all of your emails continue to shape the work of the re-start advisory board. In the last week we were joined by the NIHRCRNCC who are also gathering soft intelligence to support the restart of research in organisations.

In addition the Primary Care and Commissioning Working Group was invited to provide examples of challenge to the national specialty group leads meeting for primary care. Thank you to members from Nottingham City, NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG, Norfolk & Suffolk Primary Care Research Office, LCRN North East and North Cumbria, BSW Research Hub and Research Design Service, University of Bath who submitted a response.

Read key messages from the last NIHR advisory group meeting and our input here

We continue to document and collate your comments and insights that inform our input to the advisory group, which you can feed in here

Costing Challenge

Every month we gather intelligence to support the Dept. Health and NHSE ETC policy roll out. This time we also highlighted some challenges with costing, attribution We are assured that these are being looking into and we will let you know as soon as any further information isand SoECAT completion during COVID19 and the question of funding for PPE, which a number of you have raised. We are assured that these are being looking into and we will let you know as soon as any further information is available.
MHRA deviations guidance
The research management group is supporting the MHRA in their guidance on protocol deviations guidance. If you have any specific examples and questions you can share to inform this guidance please provide your feedback here.
Wellcome Trust Good Clinical Trials Collaborative
Help to shape new guidelines for clinical trials. To inform the development of new guidelines for clinical Trials, the collaborative wants to hear from researchers whose trials have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic – it could be trials specifically targeted at assessing treatments for COVID-19, or trials in other therapeutic areas.
They also want to capture the innovative practices that have enabled some trials to continue and the barriers and challenges that have impacted others. The deadline for taking part in the survey is 17:00 BST, Monday 20 July. Click here to take part.

Around the Forum

Forum Service User & Carer Group publishes a new guide
‘Additional legal, ethical and governance considerations when engaging in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR)’

The service users group has published a new guide to follow-on from previous publications on the topic of legal, ethical and governance considerations for service users and carers in research.  Community based participatory research is defined as: a “collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of importance to the community, has the aim of combining knowledge with action and achieving social change.” (Arbor et al 2003).

You can read the new and previous guidance here.

David Orme

We are extremely sad to share the passing of David Orme, who has been a long standing contributor to the Forum’s service user group. Many of you might have spoken to David at some of our events or at conference. David attended all of our quarterly SUC group meetings and was a passionate advocate for PPI in research for the Forum and his local area, Wolverhampton.

Other work across the Forum this month 

If you are interested in any of our ongoing activites and would like to get involved contact Kate via info@rdforum.org.uk

  • A new multi-stakeholder forum for embedding research in health and care is being instigated by the Royal College of Physicians, the NHS R&D Forum and the NIHR CRNCC.
  • The UK finance group has been working hard on identifying and communicating the financial challenge for R&D departments and sites as we know there is the unprecedented mix of reduced capacity and income from commercial studies in addition to an increase in workload for many over 7 days per week. The finance group has written the report and it will be available shortly.
  • The Contracts group is developing a statement on contracts in restart for DHSC. If you have something to contribute to this please contact Olivia Chalwin via Olivia.Chalwin@uhs.nhs.uk
  • Conversations with the Commercial Clinical Contracts Operations Group have taken place around remote monitoring and practice at site, which we are working through and considering further guidance.
  • A Forum core skills framework for R&D is drafted and with the learning group for review
  • The Government and Industry Clinical Research Working Group Surveyhas been issued and the leadership team are considering next steps for the Forum.
  • The service users group is reviewing the contract requirements for PPI in research and has published new guidance for participatory research.
  • A conversation has been held with NETSCC around student research and continues
  • A conversation has been held with HRA around the definition of research and continues
  • HRA project board was held with representation from the Forum community
  • The first Forum Archiving virtual masterclass was held
  • New website and event planning 

Changes to the CCG Excess Treatment Cost payment process

NHS England and Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have published an important update around changes to the CCG ETC payment process, this covers the suspension of Quarter 1 CCG ETC payments made by LCRNs (until at least Q2, 2020/21) due to the disruption from COVID-19; the payment approach for ETCs after 1 April 2020; 2020/21 ETC provider thresholds; and minimum trigger for payments to primary care providers. Read the full update here

The Government has published its UK research and development roadmap.
Literally hot off the press this road map has just been released to set out the UK’s vision and ambition for science, research and innovation. We shall be reviewing it closely over the coming weeks. Read the full details here.

NIHR update 

Thank you!

Three months ago the UK research infrastructure re-directed its energies to support the research response to COVID-19. On 16 June we heard of the fruits of that effort, a really significant positive impact of dexamethasone in the RECOVERY trial, the largest global treatment trial. This result demonstrates that when research is done well, indeed very well, it can provide the evidence that we need, that the NHS needs and that the rest of the world needs. RECOVERY is just one of over 40 studies that NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) has supported with all the power, reach and pace that we can offer – there will be more data to follow and of course more questions to address.

The NIHR CRN wants to thank you all, in whatever role you have been working, for the world-leading research support you have provided to our investigators – without that help, these results would not have been discovered. There is so much more to do but for now, feel the glow of a task well-done!

Funding and support for urgent COVID-19 research
On behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the NIHR has been running a UK-wide portal for applying for funding and/or prioritised support for urgent public health research into COVID-19. Our goal is to gather the necessary clinical and epidemiological evidence that will inform national policy and enable new diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to be developed and tested.
Studies, which do not yet have funding are being assessed by an independent Rapid Response Panel. The Rapid Response Panel is responsible for a DHSC/ UKRI Rolling Call that was launched on 1 April 2020. It was set up following completion of two DHSC/ UKRI Rapid Response Calls for COVID-19 which were launched on 4 February 2020 and have awarded a total of over £24 million.
The rolling call will close to new applications on 30 June 2020, as the nature of the questions that need to be addressed is changing  and funding for longer than 12 months is becoming increasingly necessary.  We have launched a ‘Recovery and Learning’ call to better understand and manage the health and social care consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic beyond the acute phase, with outcomes typically expected within 24 months.
Studies, which have funding and wish to be considered for prioritised CRN support should continue to apply via the UK wide portal.
National visibility of study site status information

A piece of work is under way to visualise study site status information recorded by sites in LPMS at a national level through ODP. This will enable the CRN and stakeholders to monitor on an ongoing basis how many sites in a particular study, LCRN, specialty etc are recruiting, suspended due to COVID, closed due to COVID etc. Further information and guidance on where to access this information will follow in due course. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact your Local Clinical Research Network Business Intelligence team or email the CRN Coordinating Centre Business Intelligence team on  inforequest@nihr.ac.uk.
Using Data Intelligence to Support the COVID-19 Response
The provision of research intelligence has been a key element of the CRN’s response to COVID-19. This has been provided within Open Data Platform — an online tool that allows  NHS and R&D staff access to nationwide dashboards of research activity.
In support of Urgent Public Health Research, a range of dashboards have been created to give insight into this activity nationwide. For example, one dashboard charts the impact of COVID-19 on research delivery, showing which trusts and studies are active or paused. Another chart ‘COVID-19 research activity’, showing exactly where research is taking place on interactive maps.
This work was so successful that it is now used by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Chief Medical Officer’s Office to monitor the development of COVID-19 research and to enhance discussions about where research should take place. It has led to a collaboration with NHS England through which CRN research activity data is presented and analysed alongside daily admissions and testing data, allowing users to see a near real-time picture of COVID-19 research opportunities in every region of the country. This has been used, for example, to decide where to promote arms of the RECOVERY trial and in support of the UKRI Phase II platform studies. The team is now working with the Vaccines Taskforce to apply similar tools to intelligently target recruitment into vaccine studies.

NIHR CRN Research Delivery Staff Learning Community: Engaging with your local NHS Community Update 

Read more about this new and developing learning community here.

Training & Learning Plans 

First Forum classroom goes live.

Our first online course took place on Monday 29th June, with delegates joining our trainer Russell Joyce for a full day of learning with the Virtual Archiving Masterclass.

Our second virtual classroom will run Local Capacity and Capability on the 31st July 2020 and bookings will be opening soon for the Essentials of NHS research.

Planning is currently underway for other interim events that we are able to deliver virtually.

Plans are underway for RDF21.

After the disappointment of the postponement of RDF20, our conference team is delighted to be working behind the scenes to make sure RDF21 provides a fantastic opportunity for delegates, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors to come together to share both their expertise and their experience of the past year in the SAGE Gateshead.

We are delighted that we have already received the support of several sponsors and exhibitors and full details of those already onboard will be announced in the coming weeks.

To register for updates about RDF21 please click here.

Good research leadership? You’ve got to work at, and beyond, the boundaries

A new blog from Dr Nick McNally (Managing Director UCL/UCLH Research and Chief Operating Officer for the NIHR biomedical research centre at UCLH) has been published. Read Nick’s perspective on good research leadership during COVID-19 and beyond here.

HSR UK 2020 – free and online, 1-3 July
This year, the Health Services Research UK annual conference is going online, and it’s completely free to join.  With six live plenaries, over a dozen sessions and 150 research presentations, all available to watch on our website, we hope there’ll be something for everyone with an interest in health services and care research, and its use in policy and practice.

Our opening plenary at 10am on 1 July will be ‘Lessons for International HSR from the COVID-19 Pandemic’ featuring keynotes from Prof. Trish Greenhalgh and Prof. Josep Figueras.  Other plenaries and sessions will explore topics including mental health, adult social care, urgent and emergency care, workforce, co-production, and diversity and inclusion in HSR.  We’ll be publishing all of our pre-recorded sessions and presentations in the run up to the live webinars on 1, 2 and 3rd July (which will also be made available afterwards) to give participants the opportunity to watch and join in the discussion at a time that suits them.

New resources in REX this month

The NHS R&D Forum Resource Exchange (REX) is a searchable, categorised set of resources and case studies submitted by members of the Forum community. To submit a resource for consideration for inclusion in REX please click here.

You will find the following new resources in REX this month.

Perspectives on enhancing consent and recruitment in intensive care studies.
Please click here to view the video from the University of Liverpool.

  • The evidence base for the impact of research activity on quality of care: what we know, what we need to know. A workshop report.
  • Perspectives on enhancing consent and recruitment in intensive care studies.
  • Remote monitoring SOPs
  • Restart Information sheet for GPs plus risk assessment tool.
  • A letter to investigators for restart and reset
  • A restart pro-forma
  • A risk assessment for RCTs
  • MHRA GCP Symposium blog
  • MHRA & FDA Data Integrity paper
  • New handbook for Public Involvement standards in research in action.

View the latest additions to the Resource Exchange here

Latest Jobs

We are happy to advertise job vacancies for other organisations. Please click to submit your latest vacancies and we will also tweet them out.

Research & Development Facilitator

Location: Chesterfield
Organisation: Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Grade/Salary: Band 5
Click here for more details

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