NIHR Barts Clinical Research Facility

Background Barts Health NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS organisations in the UK, serving a diverse population of 2 million people through five hospitals across East London, including some of the most socially deprived areas of the UK.

Our new partnership with Barking, Havering & Redbridge University NHS Trust will further expand this population to 2.5 million people.

Working in partnership with Queen Mary University of London, Barts Health is a leading research active NHS organisation.

However, we need to further improve the opportunities for our patients to take part in clinical trials of new drug treatments.

Ethnically diverse people are poorly represented in this type of clinical trial, limiting the value of this research for the overall UK population. Our East London communities map closely to the ethnically diverse people under-represented in clinical trials.

We have an important responsibility to ensure our local population has equal access to opportunities to participate in early phase clinical trials of new drug treatments.

Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs) in East London A CRF is a dedicated clinical area where patients and healthy volunteers attend to take part in early phase clinical trials. Specialist CRF staff are trained to safely deliver clinical trials in line with strict regulations.

Our ethnically diverse local population is under-served in terms of opportunities to participate in trials of new treatments.

Building on the outstanding teamwork during our pandemic research response, we will deliver a major five-year project addressing this need.

Key objectives To integrate five CRFs, and research groups specialising in 18 disease areas, into a single team operating across four locations, sharing expertise and resources to efficiently deliver clinical trials with a high standard of participant care.

To recruit and train a more diverse CRF workforce, including specialist nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and governance experts, with the skills to deliver a wider range of clinical trials.

To open a state-of-the-art CRF within the Royal London Hospital in September 2024, substantially increasing our clinical trials participation across all age-groups, by separately raising £15.4 million through a major campaign with Barts Charity to celebrate the 900th anniversary of St Bartholomew's Hospital (www.bartscharity.org.uk/barts-900/).

To extend the capabilities of our CRF to include a much wider range of clinical trials tackling a larger number of priority disease areas.

Examples include first-in-human trials, medical device trials, trials which enrol children, and trials of stem cell therapies.

To provide equity of access to clinical trials, ensuring our trial participants are representative in terms of age, gender and ethnicity.

Patient & Public Involvement, Engagement & Participation (PPIEP) Our ambitious PPIEP strategy will improve equality, diversity and inclusion for both trial participants and research staff. We have recruited a funded PPIEP group of twelve members, reflecting the diversity of our local communities.

They have shaped and informed this application and will work with us to establish a unified CRF team, set new priorities, communicate opportunities for research participation to the widest possible audience, and disseminate our research findings.