It takes 100 days to set up a trial in Spain, but around 250 days in the NHS. The plan will see commercial clinical trial set-up times fall to 150 days or less by March next year.
The government is planning to speed up clinical trials in the UK and use the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Be Part of Research service on the NHS App best suited to their interests and needs.
Eventually the plan will see the NHS App automatically match patients and send push notifications to their phones about relevant new trials to sign up to.
It comes as the NIHR launches a UK-wide recruitment drive for clinical trials to get as many people involved in research as possible. Adults across the UK are being urged to register, with underrepresented groups including young people, Black people and people of South Asian heritage particularly encouraged to sign up.
“We know the benefits of embedding clinical research across the NHS and beyond. It leads to better care for patients, more opportunities for our workforce and provides a huge economic benefit for our health and care system,” said Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and chief executive of the NIHR.
A global destination
In recent years, the UK has fallen behind as a global destination for these trials, with patients and the wider economy missing out. It takes around 100 days to set up a trial in Spain, but around 250 days in the NHS. The plan will see commercial clinical trial set-up times fall to 150 days or less by March next year.
Currently set up processes for clinical trials take too long as a result of unnecessary bureaucracy and duplication of activities across different agencies and sites.
The government will cut set-up times for clinical trials. Currently, trials have to agree on separate contracts with each part of the NHS they want to be involved. The plan will introduce a national standardised contract which can save months of time, as well as simplify paperwork to remove duplication on technical assurances.
This means if any authority asks for evidence from a study, it can provide it once without having to spend time reframing that evidence differently to meet separate criteria for another authority.
“Ensuring all sites are consistently meeting the 150-day or less set-up time will bring us to the starting line, but together we aim to go further, faster to ensure the UK is a global destination for clinical research to improve the health and wealth of the nation,” said Chappell.
