Professor Dame Sally Davies recognises achievements of 2009

In a message published at the end of last year, Professor Dame Sally Davies, Director General of R&D at the Department of Health recognised 2009 as an incredibly busy and successful year for all those who work as part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

In 2009, the NIHR Clinical Research Network :

• had more than 300,000 participants taking part in NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio studies
• processed 247 industry studies
• processed 2,000 research applications through the NIHR Coordinated System for gaining NHS Permission (NIHR CSP)
• had 2,068 people (1,470.5 whole time equivalents) contributing through the NIHR Topic Specific & Primary Care Research Networks to support frontline research.

Across the NIHR as a whole activities since 1st January 2009 included:

• recruitment of more than 100,000 participants to studies funded by the NIHR Research Evaluation Trials and Studies programmes
• involving 1,879 people as lay members in NIHR Patient and Public Involvement activities
• funding 290 research grants
• over 5,000 applications favourably reviewed by Ethics Committees
• increasing the number of studies taking place through the two NIHR Schools to 109
• contributing £412m to NIHR Centres, Units and Facilities
• increasing the total number of NIHR Senior Investigators to 163
• supporting 39 senior leaders and 19 trainees through the NIHR Leadership Programme
• supporting 44 researchers on international post-doctoral Leadership Development schemes
• more than 600 people giving their time to many and varied panels and committees
• receiving more than 1 billion hits on the NIHR and associated websites
• providing information to nearly 316,000 organisations from over 200 countries worldwide via the internationally renowned DARE, EED and HTA databases
• publishing 88 monographs.

Further information is available on the National Institute for Health Research website at www.nihr.ac.uk