St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has recruited over 10,000 patients into clinical research trials this financial year – the first time we’ve ever passed this important milestone during a 12 month period.

Since April 2018, 10,000 patients have been recruited into a wide variety of clinical trials at the Trust, spanning a range of clinical specialties.

Between April 2017 and March 2018, our teams recruited just over 6,000 patients into clinical trials – so to have recruited 10,000 patients this year already, with nearly two months of the financial year left to go, is an enormous achievement.

One of the Trust’s organisational priorities is to develop tomorrow’s treatments today, a key part of which is embedding research more fully into clinical practice – and today’s announcement is a testament to the progress the Trust is making.

The increase in clinical research at the Trust is a result of a lot of hard work involving many people, both at the Trust, and at St George’s, University of London.

The clinical trials are facilitated by Joint Research and Enterprise Services, run jointly by the Trust and the university.

Mark Cranmer, Director of Joint Research and Enterprise Services, said:

“For the first time, 10,000 St George’s patients have taken part in clinical research in one year – a large increase on previous years’ and twice the number of patients participating in clinical research two years ago.

Clinical research gives our patients the opportunity to benefit from new treatments that might not be otherwise available, and to support the development of treatments for future patients.”

Dr Daniel Forton, Associate Medical Director at St George’s and Trust Lead for Research, added:

“This is a significant achievement, and shows what we have said for a long time – that St George’s clinicians can compete with the best in London to deliver high quality research in large numbers of patients across a broad range of specialties.

This is important because research active organisations deliver better healthcare in addition to developing new and innovative treatments for our patients.”

“I am grateful to the many staff who have made this possible, as well as the patients and communities we serve, whose willingness to take part in clinical research enables us to play a role in developing treatments for current as well as future generations.”

To find out more about clinical research at the Trust, please visit: https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/education-and-research/research/joint-research-and-enterprise-office-jreo/