The North West Exemplar Programme

The North West was been selected to pilot the North West Exemplar Programme which was sponsored by Mike Farrar, Chief Executive of NHS North West. This project was of national interest and importance as it demonstrated how the NHS contributes to the UK’s economic recovery. The project aimed to provide evidence to pharmaceutical industry global headquarters of the UK’s strength in conducting commercial clinical trials by demonstrating how the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Network and the pharmaceutical industry could work collaboratively to match, or exceed, clinical trials performance consistent with the best standards in Europe.

NHS North West and NIHR Coordinating Centre initiated a jointly funded project to capture the learning and identify the high impact changes from the NW Exemplar Programme to enable the learning from this project to be rolled out across the wider NHS, NIHR Clinical Research Network and Pharmaceutical Industry. This work programme also demonstrated the SHA’s compliance with the NHS Operating Framework, which required the SHA to ensure that NHS Trusts work with the NIHR Comprehensive Clinical Research Network locally to contribute to the national ambition to double patient recruitment within 5 years.