This is a really interesting study published in PLOS ONE today. Eessentially it's a survey of the attitudes of 2300 participants in TwinsUK (a national biobank) to giving their consent to medical research. The full paper can be found here. The results of the survey would seem to highlight what has been a growing theme in the... Continue Reading →
Health Research Authority (HRA) draft guidance on sharing trial results with research participants and more!
The Health Research Authority (HRA) is to be congratulated on its draft guidance to researchers on providing information to participants at the end of the study. The guidance is open for consultation until the end of this month.It takes a common-sense approach to sharing trial results with study participants. I challenge any researcher not to find... Continue Reading →
‘Best left alone’ is not the motto we want for our health regulators
It being half-term you can never have enough travel games on hand. Current favourites for me are: a) guessing who will be the new Director of the Wellcome Trust and; b) thinking of a name for the body created if you merged all the current Research Councils into one. I did apply for the former... Continue Reading →
Getting back into the (regulatory) swing…..
After two weeks away, this feels like the proverbial two minutes from time substitution that players do when coming back from injury. Just to be sure we remember which goal we are attacking, mind. I have a feeling that 2013 will very much be a year about how we regulate health research in the future. More... Continue Reading →
Health Research Authority gets to work on speeding-up research
So there I was yesterday afternoon, with my biology 'o'level a distant memory to put it mildly, speaking at the annual NIHR Senior Investigators Meeting thinking: 'how did I ever get into this?' The event brings together the very best of NIHR's researchers for an update on what's happening across health research. And this was mentioned... Continue Reading →
Health Research Authority (HRA) stocks rise in first public flotation
The word on the street is that yesterday's Health Research Authority (HRA) public and patient involvement workshop - it's first public flotation if I can put it like that - was very successful indeed. That has to be good news. I think we should be encouraged that the team at HRA has barely got its feet under... Continue Reading →
Good to see a broad coalition of UK organisations including AMRC issue this joint statement today urging for the ongoing revision of EU Clinical Trials Directive to culminate in less bureaucracy for funders and others when setting up and running trials. No one would argue with the need to put patient safety first but I... Continue Reading →
Science and the budget, peer review and a spot of crowd-sourcing
Tomorrow is Budget day. Having just finished AMRC's own budget and business plan for 2011-2012 all I can say is: George you know where I am if you want to crunch some last minute numbers? The Financial Times is reporting today that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will announce a £100million cash injection for capital... Continue Reading →
Rawlins Review: Academy lays down law on health research regulation
Over the weekend Professor Colin Blakemore said he hoped the Academy of Medical Sciences would come up with radical proposals to end the regulatory mess that holds up UK health research such as clinical trials. I am not sure whether he will feel today's report by the Academy lives up to that aspiration, but I do... Continue Reading →
What do patients want from health research regulation?
In a blog 'exclusive' - albeit more by technical chance than design - I am today sharing with you the independent report of the AMRC/INVOLVE patient workshop on health research regulation that took part in early November. We were invited to undertake this important piece of work by the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) as... Continue Reading →
