Project Planning

This section contains information on how to plan and set up your healthcare research (i.e. any health-related project which involves humans, their tissue and/or data).

Given the diversity of possible healthcare research, the procedural information will not be relevant to every study, so please interpret it in the context of your particular project.

If your research falls outside our guidance or you are still unsure of procedures, please contact the Joint Research Office and we will be happy to help.

Importantly...

...different procedures need to be followed depending on the nature of your research, for example, whether it is an externally funded commercially sponsored drug trial, or an internally funded observational study within the NHS.

We have developed a series of interactive process maps to help you navigate through from research idea through to project approval and initiation.

They illustrate what you should do and when and which processes can be carried out in parallel to others.

Start with our top level process map.

We hope you find them a useful resource.

REMEMBER...

'Sponsor' is not the same as 'funder'.

A funder may only provide the financial resources for a project.

A sponsor is the organisation that takes responsibility for project initiation, administration and management. (A funder may wish to take on the sponsor role too.)

Please note:

The College will ONLY deal with your project if Imperial is your main employer OR you have an honorary contract with us.

If this is not the case, you need to contact the R&D Office at the NHS Trust who is your main employer - the R&D Team will deal with your research.

(NHS Trust R&D Offices now coordinate commercially 'sponsored' clinical trials involving College employees).