On 10 December, we will take an important first step in introducing our new digital service, Plan and Manage Health and Care Research.
We have invited 10 sponsor organisations, based on the types and volumes of studies that they are responsible for, to partner with us as early adopters of the new service. From 10 December, these 10 sponsors will be able to start using the service to make changes to existing research studies. We will start with studies with the simplest approval pathway – studies taking place in the NHS that did not require an NHS Research Ethics Committee (REC) review as part of the initial approval.
This is an exciting milestone as it will be the first time the new service is accessed by real users. By starting to explore and test the service with existing studies, these first users will give us important feedback that will help with continuing to improve and develop it.
While we will have built and tested the service, there's no substitute for real studies with real scenarios. These first users will help us discover what works well and what needs refinement. By working in this way, we can identify and fix issues quickly and use feedback to help us scale up.
[JM3] After this initial phase, we will gradually open the service to more users, adding further features and more study types as we go. For most researchers and sponsors, nothing will change straight away. You will continue to use the current systems until we scale up the rollout next year.
The 10 sponsors were chosen to give us a range of perspectives, helping us refine the service so it meets the needs of the whole research community. A further 10 will be brought in, in early January, as part of our phased approach.
This careful, step-by-step approach means we can build a reliable, user-centred system that will ultimately support everyone involved in planning, approving, and managing health and care research.