The University of Birmingham is piloting a new computer network that will allow clinicians to register patients for clinical trials and enter demographic data for use in research. Developers also intend to export the technology to top US universities. The project, which is being undertaken in conjunction with the Universities of Minnesota and California, is the culmination of two years of work. It features the Midlands Research Practices Consortium Electronic Network, which lets practices nationwide enrol their patients into trials using thin clients. Professor Brendan Delaney, one of the heads of the project, said: “This is a very exciting collaborative project that will boost the capacity of both the US and the UK to conduct randomised controlled trials in primary care, producing research evidence to directly support the care of patients in the most sizeable part of their healthcare systems." The technology developed in Birmingham will be used in the US. Professor Richard Hobbs from the research team said: "It is indicative of how globally competitive our research infrastructure is in primary care that our work here in Birmingham will aid the development of primary care research networks in the US. “It is rare to see such technology transfer occurring in this direction." The University of Minnesota has its own network of primary care clinicians, the US Federation of Practice-Based Research Networks, with a scope of over 16 million patients. It is hoped that in the future the databases will be linked together so that multinational randomised trials can take place.
