As a regional and national and international centre for specialist clinical services, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) is home to some of the country’s leading clinical research institutions dedicated to developing and implementing ground-breaking treatments, technologies and techniques.

Research plays an essential role in the development of care and because our clinicians are involved in research, they are closely engaged with the very latest advances in their area of medicine. In some cases, this means they can access drugs or treatments which are not generally available to the rest of the NHS.

The Trust’s research expertise is widespread: from Burns, Critical Care and Liver Surgery to Renal Medicine, Diabetes and Sexual Health, across a whole range of specialties in between. The diversity of its patient population allows the Trust to recruit effectively to clinical trials with valid and timely outcomes, which benefit not just our own patients but the whole of the NHS.

The Trust, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, currently hosts the largest Wellcome Clinical Research Facility in the UK, a national research unit in liver disease, the largest specialist Cancer Trials Unit in the UK and the UK’s only centre for trauma research.

UHB also hosts the new Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM), a world class clinical research facility. The ITM is delivered by Birmingham Health Partners, which brings together clinical, scientific and academic excellence of UHB, the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, as well as the department for Business Innovation and Skills. The ITM’s vision is to use pioneering science to accelerate the delivery of personalised healthcare. It aims to cure disease and save lives by applying transformative science and technology and by educating and training the healthcare workforce.

Clinical trials

UHB’s extensive and innovative clinical trials programme is central to its research and development work and is gaining momentum year on year.

These trials offer access to new medicines which can provide hope for patients for whom conventional treatments might have failed. During 2014/15, UHB has been able to deliver benefits to patients on clinical trials including reduced symptoms, improved survival times and improved quality of life. These include patients with prostate cancer, cancers of the blood, relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection.

During 2014/15 307 clinical research projects registered with the Trust’s Research and Development team and UHB recruited over 11,000 additional patients in clinical trials in 2014/15 with UHB being one of the highest recruiting trusts in the West Midlands Clinical Research Networks. This benefits UHB patients having access to new trial treatments and medicines.

For more information on research and development, please visit the UHB research and innovation website.