Health research activity within the NHS has grown exponentially over the last 10-15 years. Support for this research comes from government funding through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Cambridge University Hospitals (Addenbrooke’s and the Rosie) is one of the largest research and teaching hospitals in the country. Alongside partner trusts in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Foundation Trust and Papworth they work with the University of Cambridge to form Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP).
The growth in research has meant new challenges. One of those is working in partnership with patients and carers to help inform and shape the research agenda. As an organisation CUHP can seem large and fragmented with many different research centres operating independently to what appears the same objective. They’ve set out to address that and are looking for new ways to connect with patient and carer groups.
On Tuesday 21st of June, an inaugural networking event between local patient support groups and health research has been held at the Cambridge Professional Development Centre in Trumpington. The aims were to broker new connections, find out more about each other, and investigate where we could work together to improve our research and ensure that we were including all within our community in that process.
Over 40 local patient support and medical charities were invited and around 30 attended. There were short presentations from the Oliver Zangwill Centre and their work with the NIHR Healthcare Technology Cooperative, University of Cambridge Informatics Department on Consent for Contact, the East of England Genomics Medicine Centre and Cambridgeshire Healthwatch.
There was plenty of time to interact and meet others with exhibitors from the hospital and the research infrastructure present. Most of the audience were aware of the research activity at CUHP but were less aware about how to get involved or that they could get involved. There was a lot of support for sharing information within each other’s networks, with many advocating social media as a good way to do this. There was genuine enthusiasm to run this event or an event like it again and for the next event to have more input from patients. Already one group has been in touch to say they are working with an organisation they met on the day.