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University shares in £5 million award from National Institute for Health Research

The University of Kent is one of three universities in the south-east to receive a share of £5 million to provide research support services to the NHS in Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

The award was made by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and will support the recently formed Research Design Service South East (RDS South East), an organisation that aims to increase the volume and quality of successful grant applications for NIHR funding, and to provide consistency across England in the support provided.

The RDS South East is a collaboration between the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS) at the University of Kent, the Faculty of Health and Social Science at the University of Brighton and the Postgraduate Medical School at the University of Surrey. A team of research advisors is now available in Canterbury, Guildford and Brighton to support researcher bids to the NIHR programmes. They will provide one-to-one advice and assistance, as well as organising a series of workshops for applicants. Specialist help from statisticians, health economists, trialists and epidemiologists will also be available.

Jenny Billings, Acting Director of CHSS, said: 'It is great credit to the Centre for Health Service Studies and the University to have received this award. The Research Design Service is important as it provides an accessible one-stop-shop for NHS staff in the south-east seeking to improve patient care through research. We already have a very good working relationship with the universities at Brighton and Surrey, so we have been able to set the service up very quickly. We are providing NHS staff in the south with a wide-ranging pool of academic expertise, which will ensure that research bids are of the highest quality. We have already been successful in having some of our collaborative bids funded.'

Professor Dame Sally C Davies, Director General of Research and Development at the Department of Health, commented: 'Each Research Design Service will perform an important role by providing expert advice to local researchers. With more government funding available now than ever before through the NIHR, we want to encourage the development of high-quality research applications for the benefit of NHS patients.'

For further information on RDS South East go to http://www.rds-se.co.uk/index.htm

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 2:02pm 13 August 2009