NIHR funding for Keele's Research Design Service

Keele-002372-09 Since 2008 Keele has been part of the NIHR-funded Research Design Service national network. By offering free specialist methodological advice in areas including statistics, health services research, mixed methods research, health economics, and patient and public involvement in research, the RDS helps health and social care researchers to formulate high quality research grant proposals. The Keele RDS serves researchers from across Staffordshire and Shropshire and since 2008 the support offered has led to grant successes (mainly for researchers from Keele and/or UHNS) that have generated income in excess of £3 million. Thanks to the NIHR, RDS support is now guaranteed for a further five years from October 2013.

The Keele RDS is hosted by the Institute of Primary Care and Health Sciences and the core RDS team includes Roger Beech (Director), Julius Sim (Assistant Director), John Bankart, Clare Jinks, Faye Foster, Lucy Riley and Debbie Cooke (other Keele staff who supported the bid for ongoing funding were Peter Croft and Rhian Hughes).

The RDS team is available to offer advice on formulating research questions; building an appropriate research team; designing a study; involving patients and the public in research; appropriate methodologies (quantitative (including statistics), qualitative, health economics); identifying the resources and costs required for a successful project; identifying suitable funding sources; regulatory issues and writing lay summaries.

Researchers who are preparing grant submissions can access RDS support, by going to http://www.rds-wm.nihr.ac.uk/web/guest/keele-hub-contact and registering a query.

New Research Fellowship to study Co-morbidity in Hearth Failure Patients

Claire_Rushton_175x220 A three year full time Doctoral Research Fellowship from the National Institute for Health Research has been awarded to Claire Rushton (Lecturer in Nursing & Midwifery) under the lead of Dr Umesh Kadam (Health Services Research Unit). Both are members of the RI for Science & Technology in Medicine and Primary Care Health Sciences. Claire's project will investigate comorbidity and changing prognosis in heart failure patients using two main approaches: an analysis using general practice databases and a new cohort study of 400 patients at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire.

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a chronic disease which is increasing in the older population - up to 15% of people aged 85+ experience the condition and this trend is set to rise over the next 25 years - and 30% die within 6 months of diagnosis. Among older people, CHF is one of the most common causes of consultation in general practice, and its treatment is complicated by other conditions such as recent stroke, diabetes, atrial fibrillation or renal impairment.

The project is the latest example of studies of such co-morbidity by Keele's Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) which is building up international expertise on the effect of one disease and treatment on another. It will lead to comorbidity prognostic measures for transitions from general practice to hospital care, and Claire will further develop links with HSRU's partners in Vrije University, Amsterdam and Linkoping University, Sweden.

Supervision of Claire's project is led by Dr Umesh Kadam and members of the Keele HSRU team, including Prof Peter Jones, Prof Simon Davies and Prof Julius Sim, as well as Pauline Walsh (Head of Nursing School). The NIHR award of £300,000 covers the training and collaboration costs.