Tips on Applying to Two NIHR Schemes

Following on from my last post, I wanted to pass on some tips from Angie Borzychowski (of the Central Commissioning Facility) on making a good application to the Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) programme, and the Programme Grants for Applied Research.

RfPB awards are for £350k, and the total funding for the programme is £25m pa. They are distributed through 10 regional Advisory Committees, and there are three funding rounds per year. In the South East, this Committee is led by Prof Ann Moore, and last year approved 36 awards from 206 applications, giving a 23% success rate. She suggested that one of the key points for the RfPB was to make sure that you consult and involve others. This includes the crucial input from the Research Design Service (RDS), but also the involvement of patients and the public - more on this in a later post. You should also keep the decision criteria in mind, and make sure that your design is coherent and convincing, explaining the context of your study and how the research will benefit the patients. However, you should also be clear about the specific outcomes for the NHS: it's great that your work will benefit patients, but how are you going to make sure that this actually happens?

Programme Grants for Applied Research are much bigger beasts than RfPB. They have three times as much money to distribute, some £75m pa, and offer grants of up to £2m for up to 5 years. With such large amounts at stake, the NIHR wants to make sure that both the person and project are right. Your profile has to fit: you have to be at the right stage of your career and ready to take on the challenge of these programme grants. However, the research has to be 'right', too: it has to be ambitious, coherent, and important, but also addressing major identified challenges. And, as ever with public funding, you need to demonstrate value for money.

If you're planning to apply to the NIHR contact the RDS, who can provide crucial input to the design of your project and application.

Taming the Hydra: Understanding the NIHR

To many the NIHR can seem like a fearsome hydra: many headed, terrifying and difficult to believe in. However, at an all day event last week this scary dragon was discussed and explained, demystified and domesticated. By the end it felt like a logical, tolerant, well trained hound, acceptable in all the finest (research) establishments.

Ann Deehan (Dept of Health) began by sketching out the shape of the beast. Essentially, it has at its heart patients and the public. These are nestled inside NHS Trusts which are, in turn, supported by universities in gathering information and undertaking research. The NIHR supports this relationship by feeding into it in four ways:

• ‘Faculty’: provides training and fellowship funding;
• ‘Research’: provides funding for projects and institutes;
• ‘Systems’: provides support for processes and procedures;
• ‘Infrastructure’: provides support for networks, centres, facilities and units.

Dawn Biram (Trainees Coordinating Centre – TCC) outlined the work of the NIHR Faculty. NIHR offers a number of fellowships for both clinicians and academics, at all stages of their career. They generally offer a salary for between 3 – 5 years, full tuition fees (for PhD students), research costs, and full support for training and development. If the fellowship is based in the NHS it covers 100% of the costs; if it’s in a university, it’s 80% - in line with the funding offered by the Research Councils.

Angie Borzychowski (Central Commissioning Facility – CFF) and Alison Ford (NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre – NETSCC) outlined different parts of the NIHR’s Research arm. Alison summed up the difference between the MRC and two of the NIHR’s schemes quite neatly: the MRC funds research to see if a particular intervention is scientifically possible; the Efficacy and MechanismEvaluation Programme (EME) funds research to see if it really does work in practice; and the Health Technology Assessment Programme (HTA) funds research to see if it’s worth it. Can it work; does it work; is it worth it.

Angie, by contrast, looked at funding from the Research for Patient Benefit Scheme (RfPB) and Programme Grants for AppliedResearch (PGAR). These fund projects based in the NHS, but with academic input. They are intended to fund research which will have implications for patients. RfPB funds relatively small scale projects (up to £250k), whereas the PGAR awards are huge: £2m for up to five years. More specific advice on these will be given in later posts, but it’s worth bearing in mind that ‘patient and public involvement’ is crucial, that costs and value for money and examined thoroughly, and that the deadline for submissions will be switching from 5pm to 1pm, so don’t be caught out.

Finally Ian Akers (Comprehensive Local Research Network –CLRN) outlined the work of NIHR Infrastructure. The CLRN grew out of previous, disease-specific networks, such as the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN). It provides help and support for researchers in the NHS, reducing red tape, funding additional people, and advising researchers on how to make their studies work in the NHS. It had had considerable success meeting the particular challenges in Kent and Medway, and had seen a large increase in participation in research over the past four years.

If you want more advice on the NIHR, or help with putting together an application to it, get in touch with the Research Design ServiceSouth East, which is funded by the NIHR to help applicants. Based at the Universities of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, there is help available on your doorstep.