Eligibility

The services provided by the NIHR RDS for the East Midlands are available to all NHS researchers and others working in partnership with the NHS primarily within Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland, who are considering an application to a suitable funding body.

Suitable funding programmes include Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB), other NIHR research programmes (e.g. HTA, SDO) as well as grant schemes run by Research Councils and the Association of Medical Research Charities.

The following groups of researchers are not normally eligible:

• Undergraduate and postgraduate students 
• University staff except where they are working in partnership with the NHS

Training events

We provide courses on research design, together with workshops on NIHR funding and patient and public involvement.

These are provided FREE to the following groups:

• Research active staff working in the NHS and social care
• Research active staff from voluntary and charitable organisations
• Service users

Where a course is not filled to capacity, the RDS may advertise places free of charge to staff from university departments. These ‘standby’ places will not be available until one week before the course is due to run. Research design courses, workshops on NIHR funding and PPI can be run at various locations throughout the Region.

Research Advice

Advice on research design is also offered FREE to those applying to peer-reviewed funding programmes in applied health and social care research. Priority is given to those applying to NIHR and nationally competitive funding streams (RfPB in particular), but where capacity allows other design and funding enquiries will be supported.

Support is managed by an advice coordinator, it may be one-off or on-going, and may cover any aspect of research design, or the funding application process. Those wishing to seek advice please contact the appropriate RDS-EM base.

Where it is mutually beneficial and agreeable, it may be appropriate for the future involvement of RDS staff to be costed into grant proposals under the rules of Full Economic Costing. There is, however, no obligation for users of the RDS service or RDS staff to enter into arrangements of this kind.