{"id":1259,"date":"2017-10-29T22:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T22:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2017-10-26T16:18:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T16:18:40","slug":"is-health-research-an-innovation-free-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/2017\/10\/29\/is-health-research-an-innovation-free-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Is health research an innovation free zone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Join our EBN Twitter Chat on Wednesday the 1st<\/sup> of November 2017, 8-9pm UK time which will focus the importance of delivering research in a way that reflects contemporary care, and will be hosted by Dr. Susan Hamer,\u00a0Director of Nursing, Learning and Organisational Development, National Institute for Health Research\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong>(@OfficialNIHR, @dollyblue3)<\/p>\n

Participating in the Twitter chat requires a Twitter account; if you do not already have one you can create an account at www.twitter.com<\/a>. Once you have an account contributing is straightforward, you can follow the discussion by searching links to #ebnjc<\/a> (the EBN chat hash tag) and contribute by sending a tweet (tweets are text messages currently limited to 140 characters), you need to add #ebnjc<\/a> to your tweet as this allows everyone taking part to view your tweets.<\/p>\n

A recent clinical visit shadowing a clinical research nurse provoked a number of questions that I thought might be useful to share. My colleague was busy supporting a research study in cancer care, which is a large study across a number of sites and has been running for a number of years. Part of her role involves following up patients; this follow up activity involved reviewing patients attending a clinic, completing a long paper questionnaire and some physiological tests. The patient we reviewed was so supportive of the work, but had had a challenge parking, finding the clinic and then finding the nurse! For me it was easy to see that much of the consultation would not normally have been carried out this way; the paper questionnaire could have been done on line and made immediately available to the researchers, the physiological data could have been sourced from GP records or collected by the patient themselves with the right equipment. The whole episode felt out of step with normal clinical practice. There was so much that was inefficient and dated that the research and its design was already looking outdate before it had even reported. Indeed there are strong patient voices expressing real concerns about research being too slow, too traditional and rapidly being overtaken by ongoing developments, (http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2017\/03\/03\/517796956\/patients-demand-the-right-to-try-experimental-drugs-but-costs-can-be-steep<\/a>), worrying but understandable.<\/p>\n

This led me to ask some more questions, that we can discuss in chat\u2026\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n