NIHR Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust CRF

The NIHR Sheffield Clinical Research Facility (CRF) was established in 2006 and provides excellent clinical facilities and expert staff dedicated to the safe and effective delivery of all types of clinical research undertaken at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STH). The clinical services of STH are distributed across two campuses.

The CRF has two units, at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital (Central campus) and the Northern General Hospital (Northern campus). Each has excellent access to critical care, diagnostic testing and all other facilities within the hospital.

The CRF provides 6 outpatient consulting rooms and 13 High Dependency beds dedicated to clinical research, plus laboratory and specialist X-ray and ultrasound imaging facilities.

Our team now includes more than 80 staff and across STH we have supported 895 studies involving 19,305 participants undertaking 38,526 research visits over the last 4-years. The CRF supports experimental medicine studies testing newly developed drugs, vaccines and medical devices.

The CRF works particularly closely with the NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) which carries out early patient testing of new treatments for devastating brain disorders such as motor neuron disease, Parkinson s disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis and stroke. To further improve our support for experimental medicine research we will: 1.

Support early patient testing of a growing pipeline of new treatments In addition to neurology, the CRF supports a growing number of studies in infectious diseases (including COVID19 vaccine and drug studies), cardiovascular disease (including coronary heart disease, pulmonary hypertension and stroke) and advanced imaging.

The CRF will support further growth in these areas which are proposed as new themes for an expanded BRC.

It will also support new and expanding areas of research in clinical conditions such as bladder and kidney disease, bone and joint disease, lung conditions, blood cancers and surgery. 2.

Provide increased opportunities for public involvement in research and improve study efficiency Patients from deprived communities and ethnic minorities have high levels of chronic illness and reduced life expectancy but are currently underserved by research studies relevant to their own health conditions.

With the BRC we will work with GP colleagues and community workers to develop effective ways to improve communication and increase recruitment from these communities.

We will also continue and strengthen the collaborative working with colleagues that was so vital to our COVID19 research success.

We will actively seek the views and ideas of people across different groups to improve participant experience and guide our priorities and how we work. 3.

Further develop our highly skilled workforce We will extend our training and education function to accelerate the training of new staff, encourage research awareness and expertise of clinical ward staff, deliver research opportunities to nurses and allied health professionals and expand our programme of clinical fellowships for early career doctors. 4.

Strengthen our working relationships with organisations that fund research We will continue to improve how we work with funders through continual service improvement, including through excellent communication and by ensuring research readiness through efficient staff management and appropriate training.