University Hospital partnership

Clinical research trials and studies are part of everyday work in the NHS and you might not know it, but most care that patients receive in hospitals and GP practices is the result of research.

This includes experimental medicine trials, which look at the causes of disease, how treatments work and whether they are safe, and trials to test the effectiveness of new treatments to see if they are better than what is currently available.

Patients at hospitals that do research have better outcomes. Southampton’s university-hospital partnership has driven these benefits across its 50-year history.

At the core of this is the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre. That takes new discoveries, treatments and technologies into the clinic. Supporting that and other early-stage trials is the NIHR Clinical Research Facility. Recently awarded a further £10 million over five years, it has long led delivery of ground-breaking studies. Over £100m of capital spend committed by UHS to key hospital facilities between 2021 and 2023 further boosts capacity to embed research in our clinical care.