Dan Jarvis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-02-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase the proportion of cancer patients who are offered the opportunity to take part in research in (a) trust areas in which participation rates are below the English average and (b) other areas.
Jane Ellison
The proportion of cancer patients in England who participate in clinical trials and other research studies rose more than four-fold between 2001 and 2012, from under 4% of cancer patients to more than18%. Research participation in countries for which data exists has lagged behind the United Kingdom, at around 3% to 8% of cancer patients. For this reason, several other countries (including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) have sought advice from leaders in the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network (CRN) and adopted elements of the UK approach.
Since 2012, the number of cancer research studies to which English patients have been recruited through the NIHR CRN has continued to rise year-on-year. Patients were recruited to 550 different studies during 2011-12, compared with 750 in 2014-15 and over 780 already in 2015-16. However, the nature of clinical research questions has changed, reducing the demand for very large numbers of patients per study. Consequently, despite the continuing increase in research studies, the total number of patients recruited per year fell slightly during 2012-14. However, there has been a 10% increase in recruitment to date in 2015-16 compared with the same months in 2014-15.
As well as monitoring overall recruitment to cancer studies, the NIHR CRN is continually monitoring detailed performance including regional variation and variation between different cancer types, and taking steps to improve lower-performing areas. From April 2015, the NIHR CRN has comprised 15 Local Clinical Research Networks (LCRNs) and a national co-ordinating centre, which together have responsibility for study delivery in England. The LCRNs include local clinical leadership for cancer research. These Cancer Specialty Leads meet regularly with the national team to compare performance metrics and best practice, so that leaders from below-average recruiting LCRNs can learn from those with the highest performance.
From April 2015, each LCRN has been required to identify clinical leaders for 13 different cancer subspecialties, each of whom works with the LCRN team to ensure that there is a research portfolio in place for patients within their subspecialty, and liaises with the national group developing trials in that disease type. This new system is improving the coordination of national and local research strategies, and may underlie the upturn in recruitment which is now being observed.
