Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that (a) new clinical trials have the support they need to recruit patients and (b) patients are made aware of clinical trials as a potential way to access new medicines.
The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR invests in expertise, specialist facilities, a research delivery workforce and support services to support recruitment to clinical trials. The NIHR Clinical Research Facilities support the delivery of early phase trials and the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) and Patient Recruitment Centres support delivery and participation in later phase clinical trials.
The NIHR also provides the online platform 'Be Part of Research' which allow users to search for and register interest in clinical trials, matching people to trials of relevance to them.