An international symposium, jointly organised by the NIHR Oxford BRC, –has brought together delegates from around the world to discuss how to maximise the impact of medical research.
Some 87 delegates from eight countries assembled at Jesus College in Oxford on 16 November for the interactive symposium, entitled ‘In the Trenches: Research Translation for Health Impact’.
Delegates heard thought-provoking presentations from speakers from Australia, Canada, Catalonia, Denmark, the Netherlands, as well as the UK.
One of the key areas of discussion was ‘value co-creation’, whereby the contributions of multiple stakeholders are brought together to devise products and services to increase their value for everyone.
The keynote talk was given by Prof Trish Greenhalgh, the Oxford BRC Theme Lead for Partnerships for Health, Wealth and Innovation, who discussed the non-adoption, abandonment, scale-up, spread and sustainability (NASSS) framework in the context of research translation with new health technologies.
Dr Pavel Ovseiko, who co-directed the symposium together with Dr Kathryn Graham from Alberta Innovates, said: “Attendance at this event was much higher than we originally anticipated, reflecting the vibrant community of practice that has developed around the important topic of ensuring that our biomedical research has a social and economic impact.
“With this symposium, we were trying to continue to build an engagement platform for value co-creation with diverse stakeholders – researchers, clinicians, funders, policy makers and data managers – to analyse and promote what constitutes best practice in research impact assessment in a way that maximises value for everyone.
“It was exciting to hear such a diverse range of perspectives on the question which are the most effective approaches, frameworks and tools to optimise impact.
The Oxford BRC organised the event in collaboration with Alberta Innovates, Novo Nordisk Foundation, NIHR Central Commissioning Facility, Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), and Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS).
One of the delegates, Alex Rushforth of the University of Oxford, said: “The symposium was noisy, stimulating, energising, collaborative, and fun. It provided a valuable synthesis of the progress made to date and the work still to be done in the international research impact assessment community. Events like these are helping to forge a community of practice: organisations with a shared ambition to communicate, critically appraise and improve research impact tools, to ensure health research delivers on promises to generate sustainable benefits to health systems and societies going forwards. “
Take a look at the speakers’ presentations and handouts, and Twitter activity around the symposium.