Dementia: Research
(asked on 13th May 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average study set-up time was for (a) all dementia clinical studies, (b) commercial dementia studies and (c) non-commercial dementia studies supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research in the most recent reporting year.
The UK Clinical Research Delivery key performance indicators report brings together data to monitor the delivery of globally competitive clinical research across the United Kingdom. This report is available at the following link:
The report includes several indicators relating to study set-up. Indicator 3 measures the time it takes to open studies after they have received approval from the Health Research Authority, or via an equivalent process used by the devolved administrations. Indicator 4 measures the time it takes studies to recruit their first participant after they have opened to recruitment. The information requested is shown in the following tables, as an unpublished subset of the statistics that were published on 15 April 2026. The information is taken from studies held on the NIHR Research Delivery Network’s Central Portfolio Management System. The following table shows the average number of days taken for dementia studies to open to recruitment from Health Research Authority approval letter or equivalent process used by the devolved administrations:
| Number of dementia studies open to recruitment | Median number of days taken |
All studies | 48 | 58 |
Commercial | 12 | 65 |
Non-Commercial | 36 | 56 |
Studies are included where approval was granted between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. In addition, the following table shows the average number of days taken for dementia studies to recruit their first participant from opening to recruitment:
| Number of dementia studies with first participant recruited | Median number of days taken |
All studies | 33 | 35 |
Commercial | 8 | 39 |
Non-Commercial | 25 | 35 |
Studies are included where the opening date was between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. The Department is committed to turbocharging clinical research and delivering better patient care, to make the UK a world-leading destination for clinical research. We are working to fast-track clinical trials to drive global investment into life sciences, improve health outcomes, and accelerate the development of medicines and therapies of the future, including treatments for dementia.