Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH)

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) is a national centre of excellence in the provision of specialist children’s health care, currently delivering the widest range of specialised care of any children’s hospital in the UK. The hospital receives over 255,000 patient visits and carries out approximately 18,800 operations a year. Great Ormond Street Hospital’s mission is to provide world-class clinical care and training, pioneering new research and treatments, in partnership with others, for the benefit of children in the UK and worldwide.

Central to the Hospital’s mission is the provision of world-class clinical care, training and pioneering new research and treatments, in partnership with others, for the benefit of children in the UK and worldwide. A key branch within the Hospital is therefore the Division of Research and Innovation (R&I), which has an increasingly prominent position sitting alongside the corporate and clinical divisions and is responsible for all aspects of research activity across the Trust. With the stated aim of being a Research Hospital, the challenge for the Division is to make sure that Research is embedded into all decision making in the Trust and thus properly represented at all levels, from the wards to the Executive team

Across our departments and divisions, we have a shared vision to produce world leading translational and patient-orientated research. We are always aspiring to develop new research and treatments across the breadth of paediatric specialities. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children is fully committed to conducting high quality research in collaboration with our various academic and industry partners to:

• Develop novel and improved diagnostics for our patients and the wider population.
• Pioneer innovative treatments and therapies for our patients.
• Perform high quality clinical trials of academic and industry-led medicines and therapeutics.
• Understand and prevent the development and progression of childhood illnesses.
• Evaluate at a multi-disciplinary level the impact and progression of disease and our interventions and treatments, in partnership with others, for the benefit of children in the UK and worldwide.

Alongside its academic partner the UCL – Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, GOSH holds a flagship National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), the only paediatric BRC in the UK. This 5 year award provides funding for research programmes and key research infrastructure which allows the facilitation of research at GOSH and the UCL GOS Institute of Child Health, including for example core funding for the Gene and Cell Therapy Facility and Somers Clinical Research Facility.

Within the Trust the Division of Research and Innovation facilitates and supports research across the organisation and hosts a cohort of research delivery staff and research support staff, including research nurses, data managers and a clinical trial management team.

Currently, we have 1200 active research projects at GOSH and the UCL-GOS Institute of Child Health.  Annual research funding to GOSH is currently in the region of £16m.

GOSH has the necessary facilities and expertise to host the clinical work required in this project. GOSH staff are experienced in the recruitment of paediatric patients in to research studies, and have extensive experience of administering cognitive, developmental and psychological tests (WP5, task 1 and task 2).  The hospital has a world class Radiology department, familiar with undertaking research scans, and equipped with state of the art imaging facilities able to successfully undertake the different types of complex MRI imaging required in WP6 tasks 1 and 2. The Division of R&I will be involved in ensuring that the project work taking place at GOSH is efficiently and appropriately managed.