Research plays a crucial role in the Trust's mission to provide world-class specialist heart and lung care for patients.
Our research is fully integrated with clinical activity, and the research strategy is continuously evolving in collaboration with clinical divisions. Each clinical care group now has an appointed research leader whose role is to support activity in line with the Trust's strategic research goals - to further enhance the organisation's national and international research profile.
The Trust continues to be a leading centre for cardiovascular, critical care and respiratory research. The third RAND analysis (2016), which looks at influential biomedical and health research, highlighted that the Trust produces more highly cited publications about respiratory and critical care medicine than any other hospital trust in England - with researchers producing 862 peer-reviewed publications in 2017/18.
Our global standing for research would not be possible without our patients. In total, more than 1,800 research volunteers were recruited to our research studies and biobanks including participation in the 100,000 Genomes Project for rare diseases.
A total of £210 million of funding was awarded to Trust academics and their collaborators from a wide variety of funding bodies including the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), British Lung Foundation, British Heart Foundation, independent charities and the Health Foundation. Income from commercial research contributed approximately £2.1 million to research activity at the Trust.
We continue to actively work with the Imperial College Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) on collaborative research and education activities that includes Imperial College, Imperial College Healthcare Trust and the Royal Marsden Hospital. This includes contributing to the National Health Informatics Collaborative project by sharing lung cancer data and participating fully in the re-launched research development programme across the AHSC.
Other research highlights over the year include:
Two senior researchers individually received high-value research grants. Mr Eric Lim, consultant thoracic surgeon, was awarded £1.3 million from the NIHR for lung cancer research, while Stuart Cook, professor of clinical and molecular cardiology, was granted £2 million from the British Heart Foundation for dilated cardiomyopathy research.
More than £800,000 of research funding was awarded specifically to research projects led by allied health professionals, nurses and healthcare scientists including physiotherapists, physiologists and pharmacists.
Three out of 10 possible Royal College of Physicians/NIHR Awards went to our researchers - Dr William Man, Dr Justin Garner and Dr Nick Simmonds - recognising their outstanding contribution to research.
The Trust has been commended by NIHR for its high number of open commercial clinical trials (ranked second in North West London) and recruitment into clinical trials to time and target, with particular recognition for the cystic fibrosis team, who recruited the first global and first European patients into multi-national studies.
Promising outcomes for new cystic fibrosis drugs following the two phase III trials led by researchers at the Trust were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 2017.
You can keep up to date with all the latest research news on our Research news and events page, as well as sign up to the team's newsletter.