Research and Development

We have been supporting clinical research for many years allowing for better patient outcomes and healthcare.

Our culture of collaboration and innovation is fostered from our multidiscipline infrastructure, working with our strategic partners’ academia; NHS; and industry to identify the most important research questions to be addressed and the most effective ways to answer those questions.

Get involved

If you are interested in being actively involved in supporting our research please visit our Research and Development website or follow us on Twitter @YorkResearch.

Performance and Delivering Clinical Research

Currently we have approximately 100 research studies open to recruitment and last year we recruited over 4,500 patient to clinical trials.

The Trust supports a broad range of research activity across many clinical specialities and provides a critical mass of expertise and opportunities for our patients and staff to participate in high quality research.

Here are some of our research activity highlights:

The Trust recruited approximately 1,700 participants into phase 4 of the FAST TRACK study during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study compares two stool tests in patients presenting to primary care with bowel symptoms at low risk for colorectal cancer to determine the point of optimal transition from Faecal Calprotectin to FIT for this group of patients.

The Trust has been at the forefront of patient recruitment into the COVID-19 Recovery Trial - the Trust recruited 221 patients into this trial and remains open to recruitment still. The trial has had two major findings so far; it has demonstrated how dexamethasone was the first drug which could reduce mortality from COVID-19, and also how an anti-inflammatory treatment called tocilizumab reduced the risk of death seen in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19. The study also highlighted how tocilizumab shortens the required in-patient time and reduces the need for mechanical ventilation so patients can be successfully discharged from hospitals sooner. It is currently the largest global trial of treatments for COVID-19.

The Trust recruited 29 patients in the COVID-19 REMAP-CAP trial which showed how arthritis drugs helped to reduce mortality and time spent in ICU for those suffering with more severe COVID-19. This study randomized patients into multiple arms with the ‘treatment group’ receiving the trial drug and standard care and the ‘control group’ receiving standard care. This is a global initiative with 315 hospital sites taking part and so far the findings have shown tocilizumab, and a second drug called Sarilumab, both medicines used to treat arthritis have significant impact on patient survival rates, reducing mortality by 8.5%. Equally significant, the findings have also highlighted a number of treatments which have been shown to be ineffective, which is as also helpful and a key part of running a drug trial.

The R&D department enrolled 361 members of Trust staff into the urgent Public Health England study SIREN which is looking at immunity and reinfection rates within the NHS Staff population. The study has been a huge success and is being used to evidence the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine rollout which has supported the UK Government’s COVID-19 strategy and England’s pathway out of lockdown.

Our relationships with our two local universities continue to grow from strength to strength with an increasing number of collaborations and joint grants submissions being developed this year and we have developed a local strategic Research Committee that has representation from all our stakeholders across the City of York to strengthen our joint research endeavours.
Yet again 2020-2021 has been a great year for us, we are very proud of our staff and the amazing achievements from this year.

Performance

The Trust, like other NHS providers holding NIHR contracts, is required to provide quarterly performance reports to the NIHR central commissioning facility.

These reports provide an overview of recruitment to clinical trials, including commercial contract clinical trials.  They show whether the Trust has met the ’70 day benchmark’ of recruiting a patient into a trial within 70 days of receiving a valid application for approval to open the study.  The reports can be found online.  For more information about these reports or any of the studies, please contact the team.