News & Events - Archive

Funding opportunities for NIHR Clinical Trial Units

29th February 2008
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is to strengthen the capacity for conducting clinical trials within the NHS through the establishment of a new system to provide priming funds to units who intend to conduct NIHR trials. The funding opportunity will offer some stability to registered CTUs and help address the need for ensuring sufficient research capacity to support expansion in clinical trials as identified in the Cooksey review of UK health research funding.

Currently few clinical trial units (CTUs) have stable funding and this new scheme aims to strengthen registered CTUs through advanced funding to be partly offset against future trial funds. This will also encourage CTUs to increase the volume of NIHR trials they conduct.

The arrangements will initially introduce a system of 3 year or longer rolling contracts for CTUs who intend to submit research applications to the NIHR HTA or EME programmes. The funding will be in three bands and CTUs should apply for the appropriate band based on their record of achievement in publicly-funded pragmatic clinical trials. CTUs successfully or provisionally registered in the 2007 UKCRC registration process can apply for this funding. This should provide CTUs with some additional stability and flexibility, will allow them to offer longer contracts to staff, and encourage higher quality applications to the NIHR HTA and EME programmes.

The first round of funding applications will begin in Spring 2008 with contracts for successful CTUs starting in September 2008.

Further plans to enhance capacity of CTUs are under consideration pending further work and relevant announcements will be made at a later stage.

Sally Davies, Director General of Research and Development, Department of Health said, "Clinical Trials Units are central to our vision of expanding clinical trials in this country. This programme will ensure our excellent units are placed on a sound financial footing which is sustainable so they can play their key role".

Further information about how you can apply for funding can be found at www.hta.ac.uk/newopportunities