Academic medicine: time for reinvention: Teams are crucial for future clinical research

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7430.48

BMJ 2004;328:48 (3 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7430.48

Letter

Academic medicine: time for reinvention

Teams are crucial for future clinical research

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Bell has done a great service in raising the urgencywith which a strategic rethink of clinical research is needed.¹It is three years since very similar recommendations were publishedby Peckham's Foresight panel, including, for example, a nationalstrategy for clinical trials,² but rather than showing progress,during these years health science for practice has deterioratedfurther.

Credit: GEOFF TOMPKINSON/SPL

Efforts by the NHS, research councils, and health charitiesto plan together strategically have been undermined by a roguestakeholder, the Higher Education Funding Council for England,which has been determined to do its own thing. As the councilputs it, in its latest review, there is no similar mechanismfor encouraging collaboration between higher education institutionsand research organisations outside the health education sector—thatis, in health care.³ Whereas the NHS makes a massive contributionto teaching and learning for higher education, the Higher EducationFunding . . . [Full text of this article]