Our services - Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The national Patient Recruitment Centre programme is purpose-designed to increase the UK’s capacity to deliver late-phase commercial clinical research, and here in Newcastle we have a lot to offer.

The PRC: Newcastle is located at the Campus for Ageing and Vitality in the north east of England and is hosted by The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. With a history of ground-breaking innovation in care, Newcastle Hospitals have a worldwide reputation for the quality and range of its clinical research. The NIHR Patient Recruitment Centre (PRC: Newcastle) adds to the high quality research facilities across our Newcastle Hospitals sites and offers unique services to the Life Sciences Industry.

Find out more about our recruitment reach and facilities

Learn more about region and local partnerships by visiting our ‘More about our region and facilities‘ page.

Social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are used to raise awareness of study-specific opportunities as well as supporting our research registries.

Integrated data systems

Through Newcastle Hospitals partnership in the Great North Care Record, we can extend our reach for recruiting patients to new research and provide the use of existing data for analysis.

PRC: Newcastle also hosts a patient and volunteer registry: Research+Me. More than twenty thousand people have signed up and have given their consent to be contacted about research opportunities. This has enabled participants to take part in research that is important to their individual health needs and wellbeing such as vaccine studies, our first virtual trial and forthcoming respiratory studies.

State-of-the-art facilities

PRC Newcastle is a purpose-built centre, specifically designed to deliver commercially sponsored research effectively and to time and target. It hosts a large comfortable patient reception and waiting area, outpatient clinic rooms, a three bedded day room / infusion room, interview rooms, procedure room, clean and dirty utility, mini lab/specimen room, freezer room, office space, storage space and an integrated pharmacy.

Onsite equipment includes:

a centrifuge
fridge and freezers
ECG
medical emergency trolley.

There is access to supporting departments including radiology and pathology. The centre is adjacent to the Newcastle University Imaging Hub which leads all research imaging including advanced PET and MRI technology.

Our team, dedicated to delivering industry-driven research, consists of: a study coordinator, a team of experienced research nurses and a study support assistant, as well as trial support and management input from our Clinical Director, Research Fellow, and two GP research clinicians.