Describe your role
As an information manager, it's my job to provide knowledge and information about clinical research activity to Clinical Research Network: East Midlands staff and partner organisations. This means I liaise with a broad range of stakeholders based in NHS trusts, in both primary and secondary care.
I provide stakeholders with a picture of how their studies are running. Are they recruiting to time and target? We turn the data they generate into business intelligence that helps them make informed decisions about how to best deliver a study.
This intelligence helps network staff allocate resources most effectively. For example, we help to determine who can work where, and when that support is available. It's not about allocating specific resources to specific specialties any more. We're building towards matrix working wherever practical, which means we'll be able to deliver clinical research across 30 specialties within our local Clinical Research Network.
What's your career pathway?
I've had quite a varied working life. I started out in the City of London, which is where I first got involved with IT systems. I set up a computerised litigation support system for a law firm, which set me on the road to information management.
When I started a family we decided to move out of London and at the same time I realised the environment in which I worked was unfulfilling. I wanted to give something back to society and when I saw an opportunity to work in the NHS in the research and development department of Nottingham's Queen's medical centre, I went for the job. And that led me to the Clinical Research Network.
What's your biggest challenge?
The network has gone through a major restructure this year, moving from 103 Local Research Networks to 15. We're working on four major projects to enable this change at a local level, which include the development of the central portfolio management system and moving across to the Google platform.
Supporting these changes while maintaining a consistent supply of business intelligence has proved a real challenge. But it's a great opportunity too. If we can get it right, we'll improve research delivery, providing local patients with improved access to the latest treatments.
Outside of my day-to-day work, I've been seconded to the central portfolio management system (CPMS) project. I'm one of a number of process leads drawn from across England who are ensuring we deliver a tool that meets business needs. This is a system that needs to record and track all NIHR Clinical Research Network portfolio studies. The fact we've recruited more than 3 million patients in the last six years and that more than 99% of trusts are now research active gives an indication of the size of this task.
In the long-term, CPMS will help us collect four sets of data in one location: details of potential research participants; screening results; recruitment data and follow-up data. This used to be collected in a myriad of different ways throughout the country, so CPMS is a great opportunity to introduce a consistent way of collecting and managing clinical research data in England. We're working hard with the supplier, Tribal, to deliver this project during summer 2014.
What do you like most about your job?
I like interacting with people. I'm not a techie geek! I see myself as the go-between from the people delivering research to the people managing it. I get to work with a wide range of people including chief executives, finance directors, research and development directors, research nurses, network staff and other clinical staff. And we need to produce reports that provide business intelligence for all of them.
The key to my job is to remember that it's not just about creating an amazing system, it's about ensuring people are engaged with it. Ultimately, people make the system in more ways than one, and I get to play a key role in both regards.
Tell us a secret
It's not really a secret, but I was in a band that was signed to EMI in the early 1980s. We were called Arial FX – you can Google us! My friends in the band ended up staying in the music business, managing Radiohead and Supergrass. Now in my spare time I write library music for TV and film.
Content on this page is produced and controlled by the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network
