Abstract

Richard Hobbs, Head of Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

A more applied clinical research focus to many developed healthcare systems, like the NHS , potentially highlights the importance of more research that answers questions relevant to primary care, especially with service changes that result in most patients with chronic disease being managed in primary care. This necessitates the greater involvement of service primary care in the delivery of clinical research, and especially clinical trials and high quality epidemiological studies, not least to help deliver adequate patient recruitment and produce generalisable results.

However, primary care is an exemplar for a “complex research environment”: since it comprises multiple, multi-disciplinary practitioners in small units, with limited space and (usually) low research experience and high service demands.

Academic primary care has helped enable the greater research capacity of the complex environment of general practice to host more and better research. But over and above hosting research, are the research questions initiated and delivered by academic primary care important?

This seminar will be chaired Jonathan Mant, Professor of Primary Care Research and Head of the Primary Care Unit at the University of Cambridge.