Memorandum submitted by the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) (Bio 36)

Introduction

1. This memorandum provides background on the establishment, operation and progress of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR). It was prepared by the OSCHR Office with input from the Department of Health (DH), Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and the health departments/directorates in the Devolved Administrations.

2. The memorandum is designed to augment the OSCHR Chairman's First Progress Report, which was published in November 2008 and can be found at

http://www.nihr.ac.uk/files/pdfs/OSCHR_Progress_Report_18.11.08.pdf.

Background to the establishment of OSCHR

3. On 31 March 2006, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, appointed Sir David Cooksey to lead a review to build agreement on the best institutional arrangements for a new single fund for health research announced in the budget. The report of the review, "A Review of UK Health Research Funding", was published in December 2006.

4. The review concluded that, although good progress had been made in some areas, further work was needed to ensure that publicly funded health research was carried out in the most effective and efficient way, and to facilitate rapid translation of research findings into health and economic benefits. The report recommended specific actions for the Government to take to achieve this. In his Pre-Budget Report on 6 December 2006, the Chancellor announced that he and the Secretaries of State for Health and for Trade and Industry (now Business, Innovation and Skills) welcomed the report and would take forward its recommendations.

5. The review recommended the establishment of a new Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) that would take an overview of budgetary division and research strategies of both the MRC and NIHR.

6. OSCHR was set up in January 2007 following the blueprint laid out in Sir David Cooksey's review, in order to develop a more coherent strategic approach to health research in England. During 2008, this role was extended to all three of the Devolved Administrations. This change reflects the collaborative, multi-disciplinary, multi-centre nature of much health research, and the need to maximise UK competitiveness in a global health research environment.

Roles and Relationships

OSCHR

7. As recommended by the Cooksey Review, OSCHR was created as a jointly-staffed and funded office of the Department of Health (DH) and the Office of Science and Innovation (OSI) (now part of BIS). OSCHR is headed by a non-executive, independent, Chair who is appointed by, and reports to, the Secretaries of State for Health and for Business, Innovation and Skills. Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and President of the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS), was appointed as the first Chair of OSCHR.

8. The work of OSCHR is overseen by the OSCHR Board, which first met in January 2007. Terms of Reference and membership are given at Annex 1. The Board has three non-executive members recruited through the Appointments Commission in accordance with the procedures set by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and appointed by Ministers.

9. Initially there was representation on the Board from BIS, DH England, MRC and NIHR, with a single representative for the Devolved Administrations. Following discussions with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland agreed to become full Partners in OSCHR in 2008 and now have full representation on the OSCHR Board.

10. The research funders:

· the Medical Research Council (MRC),

· the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) (for England),

· the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) (for Scotland)

· the Wales Office of Research and Development for Health and Social Care (WORD), and

· the Health and Social Care R&D Office of Northern Ireland

are now referred to as "The OSCHR Partners".

The OSCHR Office

11. The Office is administered by DH England under an agreement between DH and BIS, and is funded jointly by the DH, BIS, CSO, WORD and HSC R&D.

The Roles of the OSCHR Partners

12. The key messages emerging from the Cooksey Review were that there was a need to:

· ensure a more strategically coherent approach to publicly-funded health research;

· create a step-change improvement in the translation of basic research into health and economic benefits; and

· encourage a stronger partnership with the health industries and charities.

13. The OSCHR Partners are responding to these challenges by developing a shared Vision for UK Health Research. The Partners are working together to realise this Vision through the development of an integrated plan to deliver the Vision supported by five key areas of work:

· translational research,

· public health research,

· E-health records research,

· research methodology and

· human capital.

14. All the OSCHR Partners remain the direct funders of research with their own budgets and lines of accountability. Each has, and continues to develop, its own strategy. The major difference since the Cooksey Review is that, under the oversight of the OSCHR Board, the OSCHR Partners are now coordinating their strategies to deliver the shared Vision for UK Health Research.

The Role of the OSCHR Board and OSCHR Office

15. The role of the OSCHR Board and OSCHR Office is a) to forge agreement between the OSCHR Partners on the UK Health Research Vision and their integrated plan to deliver the Vision, and b) to monitor the coordination and implementation of the OSCHR Partners' delivery of the Vision.

16. Since the establishment of OSCHR in 2007, the OSCHR Partners have worked to coordinate their strategies in specific areas such as translational medicine, and have then brought these to the OSCHR Board for discussion and agreement.

17. OSCHR has the additional role of submitting a single funding bid to the Treasury covering the activities of the MRC (UK-wide) and the NIHR in England, and the allocation to the MRC and the NIHR rising to over £1.7 billion p.a. by 2011 of Government funding needed to deliver the Vision.

Progress to Date

18. Full details of progress between January 2007 and November 2008 are summarised in OSCHR's first progress report, which was published on 18 November 2008[1].

19. The purpose of the OSCHR progress report was to highlight the main elements of the combined approach that has been put in place by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) since the Cooksey review. This period has seen an unprecedented commitment to health research in terms of funding, infrastructure, research programmes and the volume of health research commissioned.

20. There is a much closer working relationship between the OSCHR Partners, the major public funders of health research. Together, as part of a coordinated approach, they are now investing much more into research aimed at translating basic science ideas into new products and approaches to the treatment of disease and illness.

Progress in the 5 key areas of work

21. During 2007-09 the MRC and NIHR, under the oversight of the OSCHR Translational Medicine Board, chaired by Prof Sir Alex Markham, jointly developed an ambitious new approach to translational medicine research. Coordinated strategies were created that are designed to increase translational research activity and capacity.

- A system was created which is designed to swiftly identify the latest advances in basic science, develop their potential into promising interventions, and evaluate effectiveness, value for money and broader impact for use in the NHS.

- By working closely together, a coherent approach to public funding of translational medicine research was developed by the MRC and NIHR that provides opportunities for those choosing to move basic medical research discoveries towards commercialisation and clinical use.

- For the first time, the "development gaps" where support was not consistently available have been addressed.

22. In the area of electronic records research, in 2008-09, the OSCHR E-Health Records Research Board, chaired by Prof Ian Diamond, worked to facilitate coordination of funders' strategies in the area of E-health records research in order to maximise preparedness of the research community for the exploitation of the CfH Research Capability Programme. A Strategic Framework for Health Informatics in Support of Research was agreed to aid coordination of UK funders' strategies (including: maximising current investment, funding of infrastructure & novel research, training of human capital etc.), and a Strategic Coordination Group, bringing together the major funders from the Government and charity sectors is taking forward the Framework.

23. It is envisaged that the Research Capability Programme and equivalents in Scotland and Wales will enable faster and easier access to health-related data sets. This will lead to increased numbers of research applications linking health data with population based research data including biological (genomic), trials, epidemiological and social science data.

24. Progress in methodology. The MRC and NIHR share a vision that the UK should lead the world in the development of pioneering research methodologies. A programme of research now supports this aim. It is hoped that research in universities and the NHS will benefit from new and improved ways of designing and conducting clinical research, and translation into patient benefit will be supported by better tools to inform regulatory and adoption decisions, and to support industry R&D needs.

25. Progress in public health research. The MRC and NIHR have each taken a strategic coordination lead in two major areas of public health need, with the MRC leading on Ageing and on Addiction & Mental Health, and the NIHR leading on Obesity and on Infection. In 2008-09, the Public Health research Board chaired by Professor Ray Fitzpatrick oversaw the production of a map of public health research funding available in the UK and provided input to the work of the OSCHR Partners Human Capital Working Group (see para 26), and discussed the challenges and opportunities in public health research.

26. On Capacity building, the OSCHR Partners have undertaken a UK fellowships survey, which has now been published. The mix of clinical specialties attracting research training support through the integrated academic pathway for clinical trainees will be reviewed in 2010 in order to examine the extent to which the pattern of take-up of the existing allocation of fellowships and lectureships is likely to deliver the breadth of clinical research capacity that an innovative health service will require. The review will look, in particular, at whether there are vulnerable clinical specialties that need specific support in the next round of allocations.

Progress in other areas of work

27. One of the key recommendations from the 2006 Review of UK health research funding by Sir David Cooksey was to establish "... an agreed and understood set of health research priorities for the UK that target the biggest and most important health challenges for the UK over the coming decade." During 2008, OSCHR coordinated a multi-stage project with the overall objective of identifying and prioritising "UK health research opportunities" over the next decade. Extensive debate and discussion led by the MRC identified that the key opportunities for maximum impact in health research over the coming years would be the application of new and developing research approaches across a range of diseases and disorders. The Health Research Opportunities were published on the MRC website in Febuary 2009.

28. To take forward the OSCHR Partners' communication of the combined funding landscape and interactions with industry, a series of biomedical "Capability Clusters" will be created across the UK. The main focus of these clusters will be on early clinical development. The clusters will bring together a small number of outstanding centres, which will work together to deliver exploratory development programmes in each of a number of therapeutic areas, tailored to the therapeutic indications deemed most important by industry. To ensure the UK-wide coordination needed to deliver this vision, government funding agencies and the major charities involved agree to work within a single "UK Framework for Industry/Academic/NHS Collaboration in the Life Sciences". This will ensure that funding initiatives providing support for programmes in, for example, experimental medicine or cohort development will fit within this UK Framework. Oversight of this programme rests with a "Capability Cluster Delivery & Oversight Group" that reports to the OSCHR Board, and which is made up from industry and the public sector.

Annex 1:

OSCHR Board Membership and Terms of Reference

OSCHR Board and key functions

OSCHR's mission is to facilitate more efficient translation of health research into health and economic benefits in the UK through better coordination of health research and more coherent funding arrangements to support translation. The key functions of OSCHR are to:

· Work with officials from DH, BIS and the Devolved Administrations to set the Government's health research strategy, taking into account the advice, priorities and needs set out by NIHR and its equivalents in the Devolved Countries, MRC and the NHS;

· Set the budget required to deliver this strategy and submit a single Spending Review bid to the Treasury;

· Communicate the UK's health research opportunities to major stakeholder groups.

· Monitor delivery of the strategy against objectives and report to Parliament on progress; and

· Encourage a stronger partnership between Government, health industries and charities.

OSCHR's role is a) to forge agreement between the OSCHR Partners on the UK Health Research Vision and their integrated plan to deliver the Vision, and b) to monitor the coordination and implementation of the OSCHR Partners' delivery of the Vision.

Membership of the OSCHR Board

· Professor Sir John Bell - independent Chair of OSCHR

· Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz - CEO MRC

· Professor Dame Sally Davies - Director General R&D, DH, England

· Dr Russell Hamilton - In lieu of CEO NIHR

· Professor Bernie Hannigan - Director of HSC R&D, PHA, Northern Ireland

· Dr Tony Jewell - CMO Welsh Assembly Government

· Sir Alan Langlands - CEO HEFCE

· Professor Sir John Savill - Chief Scientist, Scottish Government

· Professor Adrian Smith - Director General of Science and Research, BIS

· Ms Julie Moore - CEO University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (Non-Executive member)

· Dr Patrick Vallance - Senior Vice President, Drug Discovery, GlaxoSmithKline Plc (Non-Executive member)

· Sir Mark Walport - Director of The Wellcome Trust (Non-Executive member)

In attendance: OSCHR Office lead officials.

Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR)

December 2009

[1] http://www.nihr.ac.uk/files/pdfs/OSCHR_Progress_Report_18.11.08.pdf