Deprived areas focus of new £7m clinical trial unit

A new £7m clinical trial research centre for more than four million people, including those in deprived areas of the West Midlands, will transform health outcomes, NHS bosses say.

The Central and North West Midlands (C&NWM) Commercial Research Delivery Centre (CRDC) will be based in Birmingham and help communities facing health inequalities and higher rates of serious illness.

People will be able to join research trials easier, mobile research units will be used as well as digital technologies to ensure it reaches people who have never participated in research, bosses said.

More than 20 partners including NHS trusts in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Staffordshire and Shropshire are involved.

The centre, based at Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust, will be one of 14 in England over the next seven year as part of £72m plans by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHCR) starting from April.

As part of a 10-year health plan, the NIHCR said the centres will shift clinical trials from large hospital trusts into community settings, helping underserved regions and opening up access for people.

Professor Lucy Chappell, chief executive officer of the NIHR and chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care, said: "Clinical trials help improve lives.

"Boosting the NHS's capacity to deliver commercial clinical research through these new Commercial Research Delivery Centres will support recruitment across all communities and bring innovative treatments to patients."

Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), the home of the NIHR West Midlands Regional Research Delivery Network, was to host the new centre but as Birmingham Women's and Children's is a more specialist site, it will receive more funding, the Wolverhampton trust said.

Pauline Boyle, group director of research at RWT and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, said: "This is a fantastic opportunity for our population to have access to even more world-class clinical research, which will transform health outcomes."

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