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Funding for healthcare research
14/04/2008
The Scottish Government has announced £4 million pounds funding for research programmes over the next five years which will help improve healthcare for patients in Scotland.
Four research streams will explore different areas of healthcare including primary care, patient safety and the effectiveness of new innovations such as Telecare, providing evidence for the value of care packages and service improvements.
Patients with chronic conditions who live in deprived areas will benefit from research into how primary care is delivered. This will include looking at the effectiveness of longer consultations and the provision of additional support for self management.
Two research programmes will evaluate patient safety, evaluating how best to prescribe particular combinations of drugs and finding methods of detecting adverse drug reactions in children at an early stage.
A further research programme will focus on home healthcare monitoring, investigating patients views on Telecare and how effective this type of technologically advanced care is in managing their condition.
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon said:
"Helping people to sustain and improve their health, especially in disadvantaged communities and ensuring better, local and faster access to healthcare are key priorities for the Scottish Government.
"That is why I am delighted to announce funding that will see specialist research take place into how best we can ensure patient safety as well as improving services and the long term health of the people of Scotland."
Projects to receive funding are:
- Living Well With Multiple Morbidity: the development and evaluation of a primary care-based complex intervention to support patients with multiple morbidities. University of Glasgow
- Data-driven quality improvement in primary care: integrating better quality measures and better information technology with aligned incentives and support for change. University of Dundee
- Telemetric supported self-monitoring of long-term conditions. University of Edinburgh
- Pharmacovigilance for children: Signal generation from linked NHS administrative data. University of Aberdeen