UK clinical research infrastructure receives boost as new IT system goes live across Greater Manchester
The Local Portfolio Management System (LPMS), called R-PEAK in Greater Manchester, is now live across NHS Trusts in the region and the National Institute for Health Research’s Clinical Research Network: Greater Manchester (NIHR CRN: GM) headquarters.
Developed in-house by Central Manchester Hospitals (CMFT), R-PEAK provides a complete solution to efficiently manage clinical research studies, including performance and finances. The implementation of the system was delivered in partnership with the NIHR CRN: GM and involved input from
multi-disciplinary teams across the region.
Daniel Zamora, R-PEAK Project Manager and Divisional Research Manager at CMFT explained, “Under our contract as CRN host for Greater Manchester, we made a commitment to provide a system to efficiently manage research studies across the region and feed into the national database.
“R-PEAK was developed by the NHS to specifically meet NHS research administration and governance needs. The design, development and testing of our local system pulled together expertise from our research staff, IT team, CRN and collaborating Trusts. We have successfully launched system R-PEAK and are working with Trusts across the region to integrate the system into their local research processes.”
The LPMS is part of the NIHR’s master plan to bring more research into the UK and help speed up the time taken to bring new medicines to the patient’s bedside.
“R-PEAK provides a database, document repository and enables NHS staff to efficiently create reports and track the progress of study, including performance and finances. It will ultimately automatically exchange data with the national Central Portfolio Management System (CPMS) to enable the NIHR to track performance nationally,” added Craig Johnson, Head of Information Management & Technology, NIHR CRN: GM.
Professor Martin Gibson, Clinical Director, NIHR CRN: GM added, “R-PEAK is a proven and robust system, which CMFT has used to efficiently manage studies and related finances for the past 1.5 years. R-PEAK goes above and beyond the CRN LPMS requirements and meets wider NHS security standards.
I have every confidence that R-PEAK will be a game changer in our ability to standardise our processes, efficiently create reports and track the performance of our studies to provide the very best service to our patients, academic, and industry partners.
The NIHR CRN provides the infrastructure that allows high-quality clinical research to take place in the NHS, so that patients can benefit from new and better treatments
The NIHR CRN helps researchers to set up clinical studies quickly and effectively; supports the life-sciences industry to deliver their research programmes; provide health professionals with research training; and works with patients to ensure their needs are at the very centre of all research activity.
The NIHR CRN: GM covers Greater Manchester, East Cheshire and East Lancashire.
