Stakeholders research strategy review committee: USER

A Stakeholders Research Strategy Review Committee (USER) has recently been established with the remit to advise the funding committees on the relevance and importance of the research proposals arc receives.

 

USER is chaired by the Medical Director and comprises clinically active, but predominantly research inactive, health professionals and appropriately selected members of the public.  The detailed membership is as follows:

  • 2 clinical rheumatologists
  • 1 orthopaedic surgeon
  • 1 health care professional
  • 1 primary care physician
  • 3 patient/public members who can bring a broad range of perspectives

USER has the following tasks:

USER review of grants

USER contributes to the more formal scientific review of grant applications by advising on USER relevance and priority.  Thus, prior to each committee meeting where grant funding is decided, USER meets and provides a written review from their perspective on the proposed research, which will then form part of the materials used by the relevant funding committees in reaching their decisions.

  • At a practical level: USER members are pre-circulated with a lay case for support for each application, but members may have pre-meeting access to the full application if they wish. The lay summary is written in a non-technical language but should aim to provide sufficient insight for the non-specialist to understand the broad thrust of the planned research
  • USER members will consider:
    • Strategic importance including the need to encourage repeated applications to increase chances of success
    • Potential that the research either immediately, or in the future, could lead to clinical benefit
    • Any issues of practicality
  • USER aims to reach a consensus view on these issues and provide a brief report which will be circulated to the relevant funding committee, who are expected to take this into account alongside the formal peer review process
  • For some areas of basic research which may be difficult for the non-expert to understand, USER can seek specific external opinion on the potential for future patient benefit, although this would be optimally obtained as part of the routine peer review process

As an audit of this process, the results of USER’s input from their previous meeting into the research review process are being monitored. If there is evidence that USER opinion (for example, encouraging resubmission in an area of high strategic priority) has not appeared to influence the funding results, this will be identified and consideration given to what changes might be needed.

 

Annual research strategy review

USER will meet with arc Trustees and the members of the Scientific Strategy Committee for a full day once a year with the purpose of reviewing arc research activities as a whole, what they had achieved and outlining areas of potential unmet need. Thus the view would be both retrospective in identifying what was ongoing but also prospective in identifying areas arc should be supporting.

Thus the aims of the annual meeting will be to:

  • Identify areas of research success with potential for patient benefit that should be considered for arc funded research exploitation
  • Identify areas of research success in patient care (diagnosis, management or prevention) that require a process of implementation by health care providers
  • Identify areas of research deficiency

The results of these deliberations will inform the strategic thinking of the Medical Director, and will:

  1. be fed back to research teams with encouragement to continue
  2. be highlighted on arc's website as areas of research interest or
  3. be used by the PR department for influencing activity by others such as the NHS.