Our aim is to improve health and wellbeing for all patients with Diabetes through research and an active portfolio of ambitious multi-centre trials on the island of Ireland. Regardless of geographical location or socioeconomic status, all patients will be facilitated to participate in relevant trials through a well developed network of clinical sites supported by Clinical Research Facilities, Academic Institutions and the National Clinical Care programme in Diabetes. Through well planned research activities, where feasibility and pilot work are completed to support definitive interventions, we plan to become internationally competitive for funding and deliver trials of highly significant scientific impact.
The individual network members have considerable experience in investigator and industry led clinical trials. They can demonstrate individual success with national and international grant funding and the influence of their research on policy and guidelines. They have a broad international collaboration base with distinguished world experts in their fields. We now want to coordinate this intellectual capital in this CTN network to facilitate fund leveraging, capacity building, multidisciplinary research and national and international knowledge exchange. This network is building further on national investment in clinical research facilities (CRFs)/networks, bringing together academics, clinicians, health professionals, patients, industry, charities and health care delivery networks.
The Network Activities will focus on development of (a) a research strategy (b) a governance structure (c) plan for interaction with industry (d) establishing a patient groups and public PPI group (d) sustainability plan with a focus on national and international grant applications, in addition to industry and SME fiscal and in-kind contributions. The Trial Activities (40% of which will be industry led) will follow an agreed research strategy which will be complimentary to the priorities of the national HSE Diabetes clinical care programme. The initial anticipated network research will focus on areas of established expertise including Diabetes in Pregnancy, Technologies, Behavioural change interventions, Diabetes and foot disease, Diabetes and Advanced therapies, and all underpinned by Epidemiology and Health Economic Assessments. As the network grows and attract other researchers the research trial base will expand to cover other key areas e.g. diabetes in the Paediatric and Elderly populations.
The network will have strong PPI input and will be overseen by the National HRB PPI hub, and trial designs will be robustly debated with the HRB TMRN and supported by core outcome sets (COSs) and evidence synthesis.
Work Packages (WP) will be established to lead on key network and trial activities. Each WP will be overseen by a co-applicant institution/co-applicant and a Lead PI will be responsible for the design and development of any proposed clinical trial and its execution to include pilot data underpinning the trial. The Work Packages will broadly focus on the following key areas and each WP will be linked to a number of Key Performances Indicators (KPI) for annual assessment.
Education Training and Building Human Capacity
Network Communication
Network Industry Liaison
Network Sustainability
Network PPI Collaboration
Network Research Strategy including COS and Evidence synthesis
