NIHR CRN North West Exemplar Programme – phase 1 report

The report into Phase 1 of the NIHR CRN North West Exemplar Programme has now been released and is available from http://nwexemplar.nihr.ac.uk. Phase 1 of the Programme is demonstrating the step change to the clinical trials environment that infrastructure put in place by the NIHR Clinical Research Network has made, with a focus on streamlining existing process and systems. It has focused on effective study set-up and shows the median set-up time for the 20 studies taking part in the Exemplar Programme was 53 days, 45 days less than the set-up time for studies in the rest of England. Additionally, seven of the 20 studies recruited the first patient in the world, a key indicator of effective study set-up and strong evidence that the NIHR CRN is succeeding in streamlining research governance