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NIHR Barts Biomedical Research Centre

About Us

About Us
  1. NIHR Barts Biomedical Research Centre
  2. About Us


The NIHR Barts Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) is part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and is a delivery partnership of Barts Health NHS Trust, Queen Mary University of London, St George’s, University of London and St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust hosted by Barts Health NHS Trust.

The BRC brings ~7.5 million patients together with outstanding science and enables ground-breaking discoveries to be translated into life-saving treatments. By offering every patient the chance to engage in research we maximise the benefit of new diagnoses and therapies for people with rare and common disease.

Vision

The NIHR Barts BRC combines the second largest NHS Trust, serving ~7.5 million people from 97 nations, with the strengths of Queen Mary University of London partnered with St George’s University of London and St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Our vision is to:

  • Detect disease early, carefully sub-divide patients into groups and provide effective individualised treatments. We will use real-world data to identify different patient groups that will enable us to better understand disease so we can develop more precise treatments.
  • Build on our world-leading track record of translational digital precision healthcare from the 100,000 Genomes Project.
  • Integrate real time multi-modal digital health data (clinical, digital pathology, imaging, deeper phenotyping), precision multi-omics, functional characterisation and advanced analytics to maximise new diagnoses, early disease detection, and tailored therapeutic innovation.
  • Create the NHS of the future in cardiovascular disease (CVD), musculoskeletal disease (MSK) and cancer, accelerating translational research from patient to gene variant to function to phenotype into stratified healthcare that transforms lives.

Goals

Our goals are to transform outcomes in heart disease, arthritis, and cancer by:

  1. Rapid diagnosis of rare abnormal heartbeats to reduce sudden death, then screen and prevent disease in surviving relatives.
  2. Enhanced detection and monitoring in cancer via innovative tests that enable earlier individualised treatment.
  3. Improved risk assessment through the development and testing of new genetic risk scores for heart disease, arthritis, and cancer prevention.
  4. Testing new cardiovascular devices that will lead to new device treatments and increase benefits for patients.
  5. Optimising treatments using information from tissue samples to select tailored treatments for arthritis and cancer.
  6. Placing patient-shaped digital precision healthcare research, with full engagement and equality, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of this BRC.
  7. Harnessing our population scale to engage niche diverse groups with a disproportionate burden of CVD, MSK and cancer in research that transforms outcomes in our diverse community.

About the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funds, enables and delivers world-leading healthcare research that improves people’s health and wellbeing and promotes economic growth.

NIHR Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) are collaborations between NHS organisations and universities. They bring together academics and clinicians to translate scientific discoveries into potential new treatments, diagnostics, and technologies.

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