Strengthening collaboration across NIHR infrastructure

The NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC): Birmingham and NIHR Clinical Research Facility (CRF): Birmingham co-hosted the first joint BRC and CRF conference with the UKCRF Network in July 2025 in Birmingham.

The theme of the event, “Co-create to Translate: Achieving Impact through Collaboration” focussed on how BRCs and CRFs can work together to design and deliver world-class research that is accessible to all patients and addresses their health needs.

The conference supported the “One NIHR” vision by bringing together researchers, clinicians, industry partners, patients and public contributors to strengthen collaboration across the experimental medicine pipeline. 

All NIHR-funded BRCs and CRFs were represented among the 927 delegates attending the conference. The programme featured world-leading plenary sessions and 30 multidisciplinary workshops covering wide range of topics from AI, patient reported outcomes, advanced therapies, health economics, multiple-long term conditions, CDRCs data-driven research to teamwork.

Attendance from DHSC and NIHR colleagues reinforced national priorities through presentations on the NIHR “4Is”, the NHS 10-year plan, strengthening the NIHR brand and articulating research impact.

Roche delivered a case study on inflammatory bowel disease research, highlighting the importance of BRCs and CRFs in enabling partnerships between academia, the NHS and industry to accelerate innovation and translation into patient benefit. Industry engagement was further demonstrated through sponsorship, including from GSK.

Of 440 delegates who completed feedback questionnaires, 83% said they would recommend a future joint conference. Key takeaways identified by delegates included raising awareness of the NIHR brand, demonstrating research impact and the importance of collaboration, showing the conference successfully reinforced NIHR priorities to a multidisciplinary audience. 

The conference generated measurable national impact by strengthening collaboration across NIHR infrastructures and increasing industry engagement. One direct outcome was the launch of a national BRC data management workstream in December 2025 to improve sharing of best practice in research data management.