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DRN Brochure
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Aims
- Improve the care of people with diabetes
- Improve the coordination of research
- Improve the speed to research
- Maintain and enhance the quality of research
- Improve the integration of research
- Widen participation in research at different levels
About Us
The UKDRN intends to provide a world-class health service infrastructure to support clinical research in diabetes.
In recognition of the immediate and growing importance of diabetes to public health in the UK, the Department of Health launched the UK Diabetes Research Network (UKDRN) in July 2005. This network provides a unique opportunity to establish current prevalence, gain insights into the relative importance of established and novel risk factors and determine new strategies for the treatment and prevention of diabetes and its complications. Importantly, it also establishes a mechanism to facilitate dissemination of these strategies into clinical practice. The UKDRN intends to provide a world-class health service infrastructure to support clinical research in diabetes and to remove barriers to its conduct. It is not a funding body itself but its infrastructure can be used to support studies.
The UKDRN is a network of primary and secondary care centres throughout the UK supported by the
Department of Health for the purpose of conducting high quality clinical research in both the commercial and
academic sectors. The co-ordinating centre for this network is a consortium between Imperial College London, based at the International Centre for Circulatory Health and the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism. This co-ordinating centre will manage eight Local Research Networks (LRNs) designed to provide geographical spread around the country.
Each LRN will be centrally resourced to provide the infrastructure to support high quality randomised controlled clinical trials and other high quality studies in diabetes performed both at primary and secondary care levels. This will allow both for accurate and for the rapid assessment of the feasibility and timely recruitment into studies. In addition, the co-ordinating centre has established links with the diabetes research networks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Working together we hope that this will allow us to deliver a shared strategy to improve the levels of care of people with diabetes across the UK and to facilitate their involvement in a portfolio of high quality research studies.