Greater Manchester Primary Care Hub

“Can a digital platform be used to improve the level of support available for primary care sites to deliver clinical research within Greater Manchester?”

The purpose of this project is to better understand what support can offered digitally by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network Greater Manchester to GPs in their area and improve upon this support offered. This chapter aims to establish the purpose and rational for undertaking this project as well as the aims and objectives of which it hopes to achieve 

Rational

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) are “the nation's largest funder of health and care research and provide the people, facilities and technology that enables research to thrive” (NIHR, 2020). NIHR’s Clinical Research Network Greater Manchester (CRN GM) is one of 15 networks in England which supports their local population by enabling “high-quality health and care research in England by meeting the costs of additional staff, facilities, equipment and support service” (NIHR, 2020). They are answerable to a set of nine Higher Level Objectives (HLOs), based on a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) that cover a full range of activities. These are monitored on a yearly basis and CRN Greater Manchester (CRN GM) has continuously managed to achieve the majority of these HLOs, with a few exceptions, the most striking of which being HLO6C.

Figure 1: HLO6C CRN Greater Manchester ODP Application taken 26/11/2020 (Left 19/20, right 20/21)

As Figure 1 illustrates, in the financial year 2019/20, CRN GM ranked 12 out of the 15 CRNs in the percentage of research active General Practices, whilst also falling 13% short of their objective. This suggests that over 300 practices are currently not engaging with the CRN GM and therefore not providing their patients with the opportunity to engage in clinical research. With other CRNs such as North West London being able to engage with 75% of their GPs, there is inequality in the offering from the CRNs that must be addressed. 

Desired Outcome

The desired outcome for this research project is to gather information on 449 General Practices throughout Greater Manchester that would be used to inform the development of a new digital platform. This platform seeks to provide the necessary information, contacts and training that a practice would require to become or continue to be research active.

In improving the support available to GPs, potentially more patients will have the opportunity to participate in clinical trials. Furthermore, by providing GPs with the opportunity to take part in commercial research, they may acquire additional funds to further invest in their practice.

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Dissertation