Seven new health research proposals are being funded by the Department of Health to investigate a wide range of topics that have the potential to be of real benefit to the NHS and its patients. Each research project in the first round of awards will receive funds of up to £100,000.
The topics funded are very diverse and range from investigating the use of online communities to help prevent self-harm, to testing whether using acupuncture in conjunction with moxibustion, a chinese herbal remedy, can improve the health and well-being of patients suffering from lymphoedema, a frequent after-effect of cancer treatment where parts of the body become swollen.
These new awards are being made as part of a new National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funding programme called Research for Innovation, Speculation and Creativity, or RISC. NIHR will allocate up to £5 million per year for this programme to make awards of up to £100,000 each.
The RISC programme provides an opportunity for researchers to test potentially paradigm-changing ideas in Health Services and Public Health research that would probably not fare well in the traditional peer review system
Dawn Primarolo, Minister for Public Health said:
"I am delighted that we have a health research funding programme such as RISC to allow new, radical ideas to be tested. The RISC scheme will fund innovative proposals that may be considered too risky or unusual to receive funding through more traditional routes, but could make a major difference to people's health and well-being".
Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, Chief Executive of King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, chair of the awards committee said, "I am very pleased with the first seven awards, this is a good start. We will now look at the lessons learnt from this first round to try to help future applicants and we hope to see a growing number of awards in the future, as this programme matures".
All researchers based in the NHS in England can put forward their ideas for ground-breaking research for consideration and joint applications from NHS researchers with academic partners as co-applicants are welcome.
