Children's clinical research facility - Joint Research Management Office

Barts Health NHS Trust is one of the largest providers of children's healthcare in the UK. We have the very latest facilities and dedicated clinical staff which offer the highest standards of care across a wide range of common and rare illnesses.

The Children's Clinical Research Facility (CCRF) forms part of the Children's Hospital, based at The Royal London Hospital.

Key objectives of the CCRF are to:

Support experimental medicine research in children, including the timely and efficient recruitment for, and completion of, studies
Utilise the world class facilities provided by the CCRF to launch novel research areas in the diagnosis and treatment of common and rare diseases of childhood, with our partners in the acute sector, primary care, including neighbouring centres of excellence
Increase our capacity for and expertise in experimental medicine, through education, training and co-development with industry.

The CCRF at The Royal London consists of three fully equipped flexible use clinical investigation rooms; a small waiting area for patients; office space for the clinical research staff; secure storage room for active study notes and study materials; sample preparation laboratory including a centrifuge and temperature controlled short-term sample storage facilities including -20 and -80 freezers (clean utility room); and dedicated en-suite, in-patient beds are also available for patients requiring admissions as part of this CCRF. These are co-located next to one of the ward areas on the seventh floor where ward-based nursing staff can support the research nurses. Using beds in this way also allows some flexibility into admitting well known chronic disease patients into their speciality ward for studies.

The hospital covers most tertiary specialities on site, including gastroenterology, respiratory including cystic fibrosis, endocrinology including diabetes, haematology, neurology, neonatology and neonatal surgery, paediatric surgery, orthopaedics, allergy, paediatric critical care, trauma, ear nose and throat (ENT), dermatology, anaesthesia including pain, immunology and infectious disease, and ophthalmology.

Research infrastructure

Facilities which can be used to study participants include the new imaging department, MRI with options for general anaesthesia, CT scan, ultrasound, Respiratory function laboratory, bone densitometry, auxology, and a dedicated paediatric endoscopy area. There is also a trauma unit and an emergency department in the same building for studies of paediatric trauma.

Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry houses a section of the London Research Design Service, with a team of highly qualified staff available to assist investigators design and develop new protocols for experimental medicine and other research projects.

The CCRF has direct access to the NIHR registered Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit, which provides support from trial management, data processing, pharmacovigilance etc.

As part of UCL Partners, there is now a process by which industry studies only have to agree one contract for studies which can be placed in any of the hospitals including those in UCL Partners with Barts Health.

It also maintains close links with Queen Mary University of London's Innovation and Enterprise Office to ensure that the product of the research is adequately protected and commercially exploited.