In 2021, while the pandemic was ongoing, they became a Centre for the Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Disease (IMID) BioResource, working closely with colleagues at the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and NIHR Leeds BRC, as well as a Centre for the Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) BioResource, working closely with the NIHR Birmingham BRC and NIHR Nottingham BRC.
Particularly deserving of credit is Newcastle’s IMID/NAFLD Project Coordinator Amber Ali. She has worked hard since 2021 with other hospitals and colleagues up and down the country so that people from all over UK can join these cohorts.
Amber explains:
"I have worked for the BioResource since 2018 as an Admin Assistant and moved on to Project Coordination for the IMID and NAFLD BioResources in March 2021. During my time in this role, I have opened over 60 patient recruitment sites and have supported them along the way to reach project requirements and recruitment targets."
The part of my role that I enjoy the most is liaising with staff members at sites, allowing me to build relationships with research staff across the country.
Opening sites consists of several stages, starting with an expression of interest, moving on to regulatory approvals and then a Site Initiation Visit.
There are a number of steps within each stage that require frequent liaising between the research delivery team and R&D departments.
It is important to increase our number of sites for multiple reasons. The main reason being to recruit as many patients as possible to build our panel of volunteers to make it easier for researchers to build their cohorts and carry out their research.
Another reason is to increase inclusion and diversity by recruiting volunteers from a range different locations and backgrounds.
It is also important because it increases awareness of the BioResource across the country and encourages more people to get involved in healthcare research.
The plan for the future is to continue to get more sites onboard and to support our existing sites to continue to do an amazing job.
Now that we have this fantastic cohort, we'd also love to see the IMID and NAFLD BioResources supporting lots of stage 2 studies.
Find out more about the NIHR BioResource Centre Newcastle
Read the full article on the BioResource website