Website of the Department of Health

Research Capability Programme

The Department of Health, in partnership with NHS Connecting for Health, is building a new Research Capability Programme. Professor Sally C. Davies, Director General of Research and Development, is leading this programme within the Department of Health and has appointed Professor Sir Alex Markham to chair the Programme Board to oversee the delivery.

The vision of the NHS Research Capability Programme a collaboration between the National Institute for Health Research and the NHS Connecting for Health Programme is to:

• enable better health outcomes for the public and patients; and
• support the ambition to make the UK the preferred place to carry out research by building a nationwide health data and information platform that will enable health research to achieve its maximum potential.
  

It will achieve this by:

• providing a common information infrastructure that will be adaptable and develop in response to the research process and the needs of all stakeholders (including patients).
• providing a common, customer-focused set of services that both ensure information is treated and handled in a safe and secure way to protect the rights and confidentiality of patients and individuals under the law, and also meet researchers’ needs effectively. The services will enable effective research directed towards improving health outcomes: effective treatments, patient safety and quality of life.
• providing access to a comprehensive range of technical resources and data sets, under strict protocols of information governance, that will aid the research community to access the data needed to prosecute research of the highest methodological standard.

This Programme fulfils the intentions set out in section 4.2 of the government’s strategy Best Research for Best Health which is to ensure that data collected via the NHS Care Record Service meets the needs of the research community and public health practitioners.

The Programme also responds to the recommendations made by the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Research and Development Advisory Group to Connecting for Health in their Report of the Research Simulations published in June 2007.

The Programme has completed the ‘enabling phase’ of work and signed off the Strategic Outline Business Case. The Programme has moved into ‘implementation phase’ to deliver the vision over the next three years.

• More details about the programme can be found on the NHS Connecting for Health website (opens new window)