Research team wins international award

AWARD winners... Members of the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

A TEAM of doctors and clinical research nurses from The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust are celebrating after winning a prestigious international award for their work.

They beat stiff competition from across the country to win the "NHS Clinical Research Site" at this year's Pharma Times International Clinical Researcher of the Year awards.

The trust's winning team, including Simon Kaye, senior research nurse based at The Royal Oldham Hospital, and Dr Steve Woby, director of research and development, received the award on behalf of the trust from Matt Cooper, life-sciences development director at National Institute for Health Research at the awards ceremony in London.

Dr Woby said: "This competition provided a unique opportunity for our research and development service to benchmark its competencies and skills against our peers in an international learning environment.

"To be named NHS research site of the year is a fantastic achievement and an independent stamp of endorsement, highlighting our excellence in the field of clinical research.

"We have over 350 research studies in 25 different specialities, and we are continuously opening new studies to give as many of our patients as possible the chance to participate in high quality research, and improve the care of future patients with innovative treatments.

"Research is vital to improving healthcare, but research couldn't be done without those who choose to participate."

During 2015/16 the trust successfully recruited approximately 5000 patients to high quality studies across 25 clinical specialities and, in January, the trust signed up the first patient in the UK to an international clinical research trial seeking to evaluate whether a drug is effective and safe in treating patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus and diabetic kidney disease.

The trust has also recently led the way in recruiting the first three patients in Europe to a randomised placebo-controlled clinical pain relief disease study for Parkinson's.

Dr Jason Raw, consultant physician at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, enrolled the first three patients early last year. He said: "Parkinson's Disease is a progressive neurological condition which affects about 127,000 people in the UK. The disease is associated with all manner of physical symptoms, including pain.

"This may be musculoskeletal or neuropathic, but it's known to be one of the worst symptoms from the patient's point of view.

"People also find that their movements become slower, they have tremors and rigidity.

"The patients have been recruited through movement disorder clinics within the trust. We started it initially at Fairfield and then branched out to Rochdale and Oldham."

The news of the trust's achievement follows "International Clinical Trials Day" on May 20 as a national celebration aiming to highlight the continued importance of research in healthcare, in discovering new treatments, and making sure that we use existing treatments in the best possible ways.

It marks the anniversary of the world's first recorded clinical trial in 1747, when Dr James Lind investigated the treatment of scurvy.