Clinical Research Office. A partnership between Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Sheffield
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Information for patients and the public on COVID-19 research

National:

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) are ensuring the public are kept up to date with information about COVID-19 and the national research effort into the virus. Resources for patients and the public can be found here.

The NIHR is also supporting a website by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) called Coronavirus: the science explained, which lays out the evidence and the facts about the virus, the disease, the epidemic and its control.
 

Local:

To ensure participant safety, and so that clinical research resources can be directed as necessary to research about COVID-19, we may have amended or temporarily halted some research trials. If you are currently involved in research trials at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, your research team will update you about what you need to do.

Alternatively if you have any concerns or questions, you can contact the study team using the information on your Participant Information Sheet.

We apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding at this time.
 

Public involvement and engagement:

All face to face meetings of our patient and public involvement groups have been suspended for the present time. However, we are committed to still involving the public in research during the COVID-19 pandemic and our many panels have already been involved in providing feedback to some research about COVID-19, as well as other grant applications either via email or through virtual meetings. A Guide to virtual patient and public involvement meetings which was produced by the National Institute of Health and Care Research can be found here. You can find all the information about public involvement at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals here.

At a national level, the NIHR Public Involvement Senior Leadership Team - which comprises leads for public involvement across NIHR Coordinating Centres, public members and partners - has agreed new commitments for participation, involvement and engagement during the pandemic. This will help ensure that public involvement and engagement is still maintained and progress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to seeing a reduction in the number of projects involving the public during the pandemic, the Health Research Authority has set up a matching service to facilitate researchers involving members of the public in COVID19 research.  The Online Advisory Panel is registered on the database and in addition to reviewing local research, are ready to respond to researcher requests via the Health Research Authority.