What’s research ever done for us?

“Research is a core part of the NHS. Research enables the NHS to improve the current and future health of the people it serves. The NHS will do all it can to ensure that patients, from every part of England, are made aware of research that is of particular relevance to them”. DH, 2009, p51

Over the years many improvements in healthcare have been driven by research studies involving patients and the public. ‘What’s research ever done for us?’ will present some of the advances in clinical care that would not have been achieved without studies to find out what provides the best treatment option. It is brought to you by Research4Gloucestershire, a joint initiative between the Gloucestershire health community and the University of Gloucestershire.

The programme will comprise short presentations using examples of important health care developments to illustrate the role of research in improving clinical care for patients. It promises to be a fascinating evening for anybody interested in clinical research, public participation in research, and how such activities can be used to further medical knowledge.

Speaking at the seminar will be:

Chris Foy, medical statistician. Chris will be talking about James Lind who is remembered as having run the first comparative clinical trial with a clear outcome measure, in 1747. He was trying to solve a problem of his era – scurvy on the Royal Navy’s increasingly long voyages. Today’s familiar elements, randomisation and informed consent, came much later, but Lind was still a pioneer. Chris shall briefly review James Lind’s work and place his achievement in context.

Bridget Moore, Radiotherapist. Bridget will be discussing the advances in Radiotherapy treatment through clinical trials. Within the region, GHNHSFT radiotherapy department has an established track record in taking part in clinical trials. Radiotherapy trials often lead to changes in routine practice both locally and nationally in order to benefit a larger group of patients, the most recent of which includes HEARTSPARE which reduces dose to the heart for left sided breast patients, a technique which is now well established in the department. Just about to ‘get off the ground’ is RAIDER which is about adaptive radiotherapy to the bladder. In this case adaptive radiotherapy involves radiographers making adjustments to patient position and choosing an appropriate plan (from a choice of three) that best fits the patients internal anatomy on that day. In this process, field margin and treatment dose can not only be routinely customized to each individual patient but also to that patient on a particular day, in order to optimise treatment dose.

Dr Richard Lush, Consultant Haematologist. Details of presentation to follow.

Professor Peter Scanlon, Consultant ophthalmologist. Details of presentation to follow.

Professor Hugh Barr and Dr Catherine Kendall. Finally, Hugh and Catherine will wrap up with a look to the future; mimicry forms the basis of Medical Biomimetic – the imitation of the nature to detect and treat disease. During the last 3.6 billion years, nature has gone through a process of trial and error to refine the processes and materials of life. Mimicking nature has given rise to new technologies created from biologically inspired engineering; in particular for non-invasive and non-destructive rapid real-time diagnosis of disease, the devices developed are strongly based on nature’s solution. This session will explore the use of smell (odour detection), ‘sniffing out disease’ to ‘snuff it out’, and the use of optical detection (spectroscopy) or ‘rainbow analysis’ for the early detection of cancer