New National guidance for prioritising funding and support for COVID-19 research across the UK

Published by NIHR 26 March 2020:

Working with partners across the health and care system, NIHR is leading, enabling and delivering world-class COVID-19 research, a key element of the Government’s overall response to the pandemic. Given the extraordinary pressures currently being faced by the health and care system, we must also ensure that we are making best use of the limited resources and capacity available to support research.

We will do this by establishing and implementing a single, national process that will allow the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) / Deputy Chief Medical Officer (DCMO) for England to draw on expert advice to prioritise the COVID-19 studies which hold the most potential for tackling the challenges we face.

This process will cover all funded studies, irrespective of whether they are funded by the public sector, industry or charities and also, in partnership with UKRI, studies that require funding. It aims to prevent duplication of effort and to ensure that the capacity of the health and care system to support research is not exceeded.

Details of the process and the new single point of entry for prioritising COVID-19 studies can be found here.

With regard to HRA approvals, researchers should make an application through the national prioritisation process first and will be signposted for expedited regulatory approvals so that approval review can progress in parallel to the system of assessment leading to a view from CMO/DCMO on prioritisation.

All NHS Trusts, health and care providers and universities will need to prioritise support for studies which have been nationally prioritised. A live list of these studies is being collated. Organisations may support COVID-19 research activity only when this does not impact on the system’s ability to recruit participants and/or provide the resources (including staff, samples and data) needed to support nationally prioritised research. Organisations will be expected to pause any local studies that impede their ability to contribute to national research efforts.

• Government support for research related to COVID-19: Find out how to get your study nationally supported or funded as high priority COVID-19 Urgent Public Health Research.
• COVID-19 and Clinical Research Oversight Group CUH: This has been established under the governance of the NIHR Cambridge BRC and will review nationally prioritised studies to consider which can be supported locally with the available resources.
• NIHR response to COVID-19 pandemic: All NIHR updates on one page.
• Covid-19 response from the NIHR Cambridge BRC: Information for researchers, academics and clinicians on clinical research taking place on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus during the COVID-19 outbreak.