Making history in healthcare

12 Dec 2016

This year, an integrated approach by Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre (MAHSC) combined the talents of the University and partner NHS Trusts to secure National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) status, resulting in £28.5 million of research funding

For Professor Ian Greer, who leads both our Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health and MAHSC, this integrated ‘One Manchester’ approach aligns with Greater Manchester health devolution.

Ours is the first, and currently only, region to benefit from devolution of the health care budget – the transfer of powers and responsibilities from national government to a geographical region. This delivers power into the hands of local decision-makers to better meet the needs of the people who live and work in their region. In practical terms it meant taking control of combined health and social care budgets worth more than £6 billion.

This partnership working will deliver better health care to our population, not only through more integrated care, but also by innovating care through biomedical research, ensuring we deliver cutting edge treatment.

“Each of the seven research themes we’ll be investigating as part of the BRC is led by a University of Manchester researcher – each of whom is also closely linked to an NHS Trust,” Professor Greer explains.

“The success of MAHSC has been fundamental in generating close co-operation across the city to make this BRC award possible.”

The University also adopted partnership working to improve our operations with the launch of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health in August 2016, to better integrate the outstanding research in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences. Professor Greer asserts: “Our new, simpler, and more integrated structure better enables a translational approach to biology, medicine and health – from pure discovery science through to clinical application and patient care.”

The NIHR Biomedical Research Centre partnership is hosted by Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, alongside the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust.

All of these are brought together under MAHSC, which has more than 36,000 members working across the University and the NHS and has access to 3 million patients and vast quantities of biomedical and health data.