New research centre to improve patient care in Scotland

The Scottish Improvement Science Collaborating Centre – a Scotland-wide initiative to improve quality of patient care and ensure that world-leading research leads to impact across society – has been awarded funding of £3.25 million by a consortium of organisations including the Health Foundation.

The Centre will be based at the University of Dundee but it will be a large-scale collaboration involving universities, health boards, local authorities, patients, carers, communities and advocacy groups. The funding has been made by a partnership involving the Scottish Funding Council, the Chief Scientist Office, the Health Foundation, and NHS Education for Scotland (NES). The Centre will be led by the University’s Professor Mary Renfrew and Professor Dilip Nathwani from NHS Tayside.

Professor Nick Barber, Director of Research at the Health Foundation, said, 'This innovative centre will enable research to flourish and help build capacity and capability for improvement science.  As an independent healthcare charity our goal is improvement of healthcare, and our contribution to this initiative will harness the data and knowledge generated by research to make a difference for patients and populations.'

Welcoming the launch of the Centre, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil MSP, said, 'I am proud that the NHS in Scotland has a worldwide reputation for patient safety and delivering quality care. I believe that this partnership will build on this by allowing our NHS to take best practice and learning from across the world and apply it to our healthcare services to continue to drive up the quality of patient experience and outcomes, and improve the health of the public.

Professor Mary Renfrew, said, 'This Centre will address one of the major questions which has always surrounded public health and healthcare, namely how do we develop great research, whether done here in Scotland or internationally, into sustainable and consistent practice that can have a real impact on people’s lives? Our ultimate goal across the health services must always be to improve health and wellbeing in society.'

The funding is being provided over five financial years. The contributions from the four funders are: the Scottish Funding Council £1 million, the Chief Scientist Office £1 million, NHS Education for Scotland £750,000 and the Health Foundation £500,000 (for this phase of the project).

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Mike Findlay, Media Manager
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