The UK Clinical Research Facility (UK CRF) Network is an exciting initiative recently launched by the Department of Health/ National Institute for Health Research and the Chief Scientist's Office for Scotland under the leadership of Professor Jackie Oldham. It has emerged out of the complimentary strengths of the participating organisations across a range of disciplines within clinical research and experimental medicine.

 

The millennial Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facilities (WT CRFs) in Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester and Southampton have been establishing clinical research practices since their inception. Over the past eight years they have been instrumental in developing new strategies and providing a structure within which qualified staff can support clinical research.

 

Utilising the experience and expertise of the original five millennial WTCRFs, and working across the UK infrastructure for experimental medicine, the UK CRF Network will be working toward the development of an integrated approach to identify, conduct and share common themes and good operating practices across the network. From this process we plan to develop a comprehensive collection of standard operating procedures and management initiatives to guide standards in clinical and experimental medicine research processes. These will embrace all components of the UK infrastructure for clinical research and experimental medicine and develop a coordinated approach to the work undertaken by CRFs.

 

With the increasing demand for information the CRF Network will provide a centralised infrastructure for information to assist in the development of new CRFs.

 

For further inforamtion please contact Shane Hoy, Operations Manager, UK CRF Network, Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, 131 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 7DN, Tel: 0161 306 5122, e-mail: shane.hoy@manchester.ac.uk.