You will have seen the output of the NHS England Consultation on commercial clinical trials. 

NHS England with the NIHR are aiming to create a process that costs a multi-centre commercial project once only. The ambition being that this will speed up the set-up time and equalise out the variance in costs up and down the country, making the UK a more attractive place to bring research.

The ECMC network always being ahead of time, did quite a lot of work on this topic a couple of years ago and brought together key stakeholders from the network to discuss how the ECMCs could achieve a more standardised costing structure.

Now with NHS England and the NIHR behind us we are looking again at costings and have been approached by the NIHR to pilot these new processes as a network. In preparation, we held a small workshop with a group of keen and committed network staff from around the country to start the ball rolling.

As predicted there were more questions than answers at this stage, but we will be there at the beginning of this exciting project advising and putting forward practical ideas for how costings can and should work in the future.

Its early days yet but we’re sure we can make a huge contribution to this exciting initiative.

If you would like to be involved or have information you want to share please do get in touch with Sharan Sandhu, ECMC Programme Office Manager sharan.sandhu@cancer.org.uk