Our Infrastructure

Midlands and Wales Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre (MW-ATTC)

Through funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and in close collaboration with NIHR infrastructure and its counterparts in the devolved administrations, the ATTC network aims to build upon its existing work, expand its reach, and integrate its initiatives into standard practice. The primary focus will be on enhancing the readiness of advanced therapy clinical trials, with the goal of expanding capacity and capability across a broader network to bring more innovative therapies to patients and strengthen the UK’s appeal to industry.

The aim of the MW-ATTC has been to enable UK advanced therapy companies to reach the clinical market, whilst simultaneously building clinical capacity and capability regionally to deliver these breakthrough therapies to patients. Initiatives have included:

BHP Research FIRST - disease agnostic, non-CTIMP only

BHP provides a complimentary service supporting non-CTIMP studies.  This flexible and innovative team can support delivery of your entire trial, or just the elements where you require support; such as database building, study coordination, clinical audits, service evaluations. 

BHP Evaluation Service

The BHP Evaluation Service aims to increase collaboration across partners, developing a process for clinical-academic leaders to collectively set evaluation priorities with the region.

 The service evaluates changes in health and care services rapidly, and disseminates knowledge of successful innovations to other parts of the health and care system – underpinned by a commitment to move at pace.

NIHR/ Wellcome Clinical Research Facility - Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Birmingham Children’s Hospital

Clinical Trial Facility - Mental Health

Clinical Research Facility - Sandwell Health Campus

Our CRFs provide high-quality clinical space where volunteers, patients and service users can take part clinical research.  The purpose-built specialist facilities are equipped for outpatient and inpatient visits and designed to support high-intensity studies and overnight stays.

Supported by highly-training research staff and support services (pharmacy, imaging and radiology) experienced in clinical trials and often able to support access to research specific equipment.

Central and North West Commercial Research Delivery Centre (C&NWM CRDC)

Our mission is to build a nationally leading, patient-centred commercial trial network, delivering high-quality trials that reflect the diversity of our population, specialising in children’s, health and mental health while pioneering ‘hospital to home’, reducing the burden of participation.

We will deliver an integrated trial delivery model, build an upskilled workforce and strengthen collaborative partnerships.  By integrating cutting-edge digital platforms, enhanced community engagement, and streamlined study setup processes, aligned to the O’Shaughnessy Report recommendations the CRDC is positioned to expand commercial trial activity, attract industry investment, and improve patient health outcomes.

Hosted by Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust the CRDC operates under a federated leadership model, supporting the one-NIHR ambition across 4 integrated care boards ensuring strong governance and patient centred oversight.

NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Improving Health in Slums (GHRU)

The aim of the NIHR funded Global Health Research Unit on Improving Health in Slums is to work collaboratively to improve health service delivery in slums, benefiting the population of low and middle income countries by reducing morbidity and mortality at the population level, and doing this at the smallest possible cost to both individuals receiving health services and wider society.

LifeArc Centre for Acceleration of Rare Disease Trials

https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifearc-centre-for-acceleration-of-rare-disease-trials 

We will deliver a unique, UK-wide, fully patient-centred rare disease trials acceleration platform (RD-TAP). We will develop a UK 4-nations, Rare Disease (RD) trials accelerator platform to deliver trials of new treatments, in ‘one stop’, patient friendly models, to get more treatments to more people, faster. 

We will work with people living with a rare disease to help them be ready to take part in treatment trials with outcomes most important for them. We will recruit teams to deliver new types of trials with ‘nothing about us without us’ trial designs, so that new treatments can be quickly approved for use in the clinic

We will engage with diverse RD communities and provide regular updates for the UK RD research community. With work packages including: 

•  Facilitating Recruitment 

•  Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) selection 

• Trial Design 

• Accelerating Trial Delivery 

Implementing innovation in the NHS WP and 3 cross-cutting: 

• Patient & Public Involvement & Engagement 

• Equality Diversity & Inclusion 

• Training & Capacity Building 

Mental Health Mission Midlands Translational Centre (MHMMTC)

The Mental Health Mission (MHM) - part of the Mental Health Goals Programme - was launched in May 2023, with funding to support innovation in mental health research, services and digital technology.

The Mental Health Mission Midlands Translational Centre (MHMTC) in Birmingham, will support research and development of novel treatments for early intervention in psychosis, depression and children.  Accelerating mental health research capacity by developing digital registries, building on regional leadership and facilities, and supporting the development of new industrial partnerships. It will have an initial clinical focus on new precision interventions for early psychosis (EP) and treatment resistant depression (TRD).

Bringing together expertise in:

• Early Psychosis: developing research infrastructure to facilitate earlier identification, treatment, and prevention of emerging psychosis.

• Children and Young People’s Mental Health: developing the infrastructure and capacity for early phase studies for new treatments for children and adolescent mental health.

• Mood Disorders: developing a network of mood disorder research clinics to run trials of treatments and studies in patients with difficult-to-treat depression. In November 2024, an additional £18 million was invested in an expansion of the network to include a total of 15 clinics in areas across the UK with the highest levels of depression.

• Data and Digital: enabling technologies to be used efficiently and consistently in the development and evaluation of new treatments through harnessing new forms of data and leveraging informatics for a trials platform.

• Capacity Development: increase staff capacity in the Midlands region to deliver mental health research.

The RDN provides practical support to researchers and delivery teams to enable research, this includes:

• Support with Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)

• Research training, including Good Clinical Practice and consent   

• Support from a flexible research nurse team

• Funding for core services

The West Midlands Regional Research Delivery Network (RRDN) webpages provide more local information.

As well as a core management team, there are Regional Research Specialty and Settings Leads (RSSL), in place to support the growth of research capacity and capability across the West Midlands - their contact details are attached.