In the HRB Report on ‘Irish Primary Care R&D’ Mant (2006) noted ‘the need for a firm evidence base is as great in primary as in hospital care … and must in part be obtained by R&D in primary care’. NUI Galway and RCSI, together with the Irish College of General Practitioners, established the Irish Primary Care Research Network (IPCRN) in 2013, with over 500 practices (out of 1500) now participating. The aim of the proposed Irish Primary Care Trial Network is to improve individual patient health and health care through the design, conduct and dissemination of high quality, internationally recognised, primary care trials which address important and common problems (see Figure).
Network Activities will consist of three components. Trial support infrastructure to provide the expertise in trial design, conduct and completion, needed by network members and external researchers accessing Irish primary care. Building on relationships with the HRB Clinical Research Facility Galway and the Scottish Primary Care Research Network, practice data quality will receive specific focus. An education programme will provide the ‘go to’ national location for primary care trial education resources.
Methodological Research, in collaboration with the MRC All-Ireland Hub for Trials Methodology will investigate how to optimise practitioner and patient recruitment. Trial activities include two exemplar full definitive interventions arising from prior work. Firstly, a drug intervention trial of fosfomycin and symptomatic treatment of uncomplicated UTI; secondly, an organisational intervention trial to optimise primary care prescribing for older people. An exemplar phase 2 pilot study to validate a prediction tool for childhood UTI is also included.
Sustainability will be enhanced by our IPCRN development experiences and those of our international collaborators. The summation of these discrete research centres on the island of Ireland will facilitate a step change in Irish primary care research.
