21 October 2015

King’s Health Partners is helping to lead an increase in the level of clinical research in the NHS,

according to new figures published in a league table today.

In a sign of the research strength at the heart of our partnership, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust have all increased their number of recruiting studies in the last year:

  • South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has increased by 20% from 76 in 2013/14 to 91 in 2014/15.
  • Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust increased by 9% from 422 studies in 2013/14 to 459 studies in 2014/15, topping the London league table for overall number of studies.
  • King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust carried out 311 studies in 2015/15, a 15% increase on last year.

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust were in the top five trusts to achieve the biggest increase in research study activity.

Clinical research is a vital part of the work of the NHS, and provides evidence about “what works” so that treatments for patients can be improved. In addition, there is research evidence to show that patients do better in hospitals and GP surgeries that carry out research – even if they don’t actually take part in a study themselves.

Research

There are many different types of research – some studies may involve tracking the health of patients over a number of years, while others, such as clinical trials, involve developing new treatments for diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes. King’s Health Partners is currently one of the UK’s busiest centres for conducting NHS and commercial clinical trials, running around 600 trials at any one time.

Professor Sir Robert Lechler, Executive Director of King’s Health Partners, says:

As an Academic Health Sciences Centre, our purpose is to translate cutting-edge research into excellent patient care. We are only able to achieve this by increasing the number of research studies we carry out each year so we can continue to make the scientific breakthroughs that benefit our patients.

The league table is published by the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network, the research delivery arm of the NHS. It shows the number of studies undertaken by each NHS trust from April 2014 to March 2015, and the number of patients who volunteered to take part in clinical research.  Over half of the NHS trusts across the country increased the number of clinical research studies undertaken last year, contributing to the drive for better treatments for all NHS patients.