Our research outlook for 2024 – 2028
Our approach and investment in research are underpinned by five guiding principles:
Research that eventually leads to new medications and treatments is vital to transforming patients’ lives, leading to better health outcomes for the people of north central London and beyond. To drive the better outcomes that we seek, we will adopt a bottom-up approach where we partner with the trust and others to help embed a research culture that will enable this.
Aligned with the charity’s strategic framework, our research strategy’s overarching objective is to ensure the research we fund and research activities we undertake put patients and their needs at the heart of what we do and are of the highest quality.
We will integrate patient and public involvement and engagement in all aspects of our research funding cycle. Aspects of this include reviewing and recommending applications for funding and co-designing the forms we use to ensure that we are asking the questions that really matter.
The broad research fields and disciplines at the Royal Free London mean we cannot work in isolation. We will seek mutually beneficial partnerships with other organisations where there is a clear benefit to patients and alignment with our strategic objectives.
The charity has a proud record of providing seed funding for research ideas that lead to major follow-on funding. In order for our pump priming to be truly transformative, we will seek to support novel research that is high risk but offers the possibility of ground-breaking discoveries and significant breakthroughs that could lead to lifechanging outcomes for patients. We will therefore pilot a high-risk research innovation scheme to fund high risk/high reward research.
Training the next generation of researchers at the trust is key to enabling them to lead independent research projects, become the research leaders of the future, and for the trust to be recognised as a leading research-active hospital. To help drive this holistic approach forward, we will establish the Royal Free Charity research training programme. The programme will provide early career research support underpinned by skills and mentorship initiatives.
We will ensure that our research governance structures are fully aligned with AMRC standards to enable us to fund the best research with the greatest impact for patients. AMRC membership will give us a platform through which we can achieve our wider strategic priorities.
