The Research and Innovation Unit is part of the Policy, Partnerships and Innovation Group. The internal Research Needs Panel (RNP) evaluates gaps in evidence that (National Health Trust) NHS England teams identified. During its first year the RNP was expanded to include Public Health England (PHE) and Health Education England (HEE) to ensure our policy research needs were aligned.
The aim is to use the analyses to influence future research and build further capability in evaluation and research, improve how we measure the impact of our work, learn from what works well, and what doesn’t. Strong partnerships across the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) infrastructure are being established, with academia and national research councils to support research and evaluation. The NIHR is the research arm of the NHS and offers a thriving environment for conducting large scale commercial contract clinical research, so that life sciences companies can allocate clinical studies to the UK with confidence. We proactively support the life sciences industry to deliver high quality clinical research across our National Health Service, we identify priorities and review evidence and emerging health technologies to inform the research community. We manage the NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio. Through our services provided by the NIHR’s Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure and Clinical Research Network we can work with companies on the full range of research studies from early stage, translational research through to later stage clinical trials in the NHS.
The use of data and informatics within the health and care system is at a crucial point of change. NHS England has embarked on an unprecedented programme to promote transparency in the health service.