You can contribute to clinical research by directly taking part in studies or by agreeing to your health information being shared. If you meet the criteria for a study, you may be invited to take part by letter, text or phone call, or during a consultation with the doctor or nurse. You may see a poster on our website, or in the waiting room, and think you may be suitable – please get in touch with our research team to discuss how to volunteer.
Do I have to take part in a research study?
No – taking part in a research study is entirely voluntary and can only be done so with your consent. If you choose to take part in a study, but later change your mind you can withdraw at any stage. You can be completely reassured that this will not affect your ongoing routine care at our practice.
What about my data?
The studies we support all have ethical approval to ensure they are safe for you to take part in and that your information is treated confidentially, in accordance with UK laws and rules (including GDPR). If you consent to be involved in a study, the research team may need us to provide some data from your health records, for example to confirm that you are eligible to take part or to evaluate the new drug or treatment. We would only share identifiable data with your consent.
In some cases, other studies will use ‘informatics tools’ to extract ‘pseudoanonymised’ data from the practice more generally. This means that before it leaves the practice, all patient identifiers (i.e. name, DOB, address or NHS number) are removed so it cannot be identified to a particular patient. You can opt out of your date being used for this purpose here.
Organisations we are currently involved in are:
- CPRD: a government service that provides anonymised patient data for research to improve patient and public health. You cannot be identified from the information sent to CPRD.
- Optimum patient care: a not-for-profit, social enterprise, aimed at improving disagnosis, treatment and management of chronic diseases within primary care.
Who funds the research?
Most research we are involved in are academic studies, hosted by universities. For these studies we receive funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (https://www.nihr.ac.uk/). Occasionally we undertake commercial studies and funding for these often comes from pharmaceutical companies. You are welcome to ask any questions you have about the study sponsors.
How do I get in touch?
If you are interested in taking part in any of our studies, or want to know more about research at Tyntesfield, please feel free to give our research team a call on 01275 850611 (direct line) or email us at bnssg.researchtmg@nhs.net.
We look forward to hearing from you!
