Research for Patient Benefit Programme

The RfPB Programme Response mode funding programme Grants may be: Costed up to £350k (Tier 1) Feasibility applications costed up to £250k (Tier 2) More upstream studies costed up to £150k (Tier 3) Three funding competitions per year Eight Regional Advisory Panels > 900 awards made to date totalling nearly £215m Overall success rate of ~ 22% (50% success rate at stage 2) 2

Research for Patient Benefit Supports high quality investigator-led research projects that address issues of importance to the NHS and social care Supports qualitative or quantitative research that could: Study the way NHS services are provided and used Evaluate whether interventions are effective and provide value for money Examine whether alternative means for providing healthcare would be more effective Formally assess innovations and developments in healthcare Assess feasibility of projects requiring major applications to other funders

New Investigators New investigators are encouraged to apply and the team as a whole is assessed Relatively inexperienced lead applicant with sufficiently experienced and resourced co-applicants is fine RfPB offers best opportunity for early career researchers to act as lead applicant within NIHR programmes Size, scale and nature of projects should appeal to early career researchers Response mode nature and flexibility on design and topic ensures programme has wide remit

New Investigators – case study RfPB is developing further guidance and case studies on new investigators

Social Care call Social care specific call with applications assessed by a single national panel of social care research experts drawn from regional RfPB panels 56 applications submitted 1 application rejected on scope 9 application moved to regular RfPB 13 applications rejected on competitiveness via the triage process 33 applications assessed by the stage 1 panel 17 applications sent for external peer review and assessed by the stage 2 panel 12 applications recommended for funding totalling £2.56m. The 12 projects recommended for funding amounts to 71% of applications invited to stage 2 and 21% of total applications received (26% of applications excluding the ones moved to regular RfPB) done

What does a funding panel look like? Know the assessment process Panel typically comprises ~20 members Range of expertise Methods (stats, qualitative, HE, trialists) Clinical (GP, surgeon, nurse, psychiatrist) Patients and Public Response mode panels tend to have a wider general mix of expertise External peer reviewers provide comments on specific areas e.g. clinical area

RfPB: the research question What is an interesting/important question? How important is the new knowledge for achieving patient benefit? What is the trajectory from this question to patient benefit? Will the methods provide a clear answer to the question? Is the cost of the research commensurate to the ‘risk’ it won’t deliver?

Team composition  Needs to reflect nature of proposed work – under/over costing will be picked up by panel Each co-applicant needs a clearly described role – if panel cannot determine what each member is doing it undermines application Including senior colleagues at 1% is not well received by panels and looks suspicious If the PI is ‘junior’ make it clear who is performing a ‘mentor’ role and give this person a suitable %FTE.