Nearly 85% of our population are white British, and we have substantial Asian or Asian British communities in Oldham and Rochdale, and the largest Jewish population outside London in Bury, Salford and Manchester. We collaborate closely with The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Salford and others, and our key partners in Health Innovation Manchester, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility (CRF), the NIHR Northwest Regional Research Delivery Network (RDN), the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Research Collaboration and the NIHR Commercial Research Delivery Centre. We are highly active in delivering clinical trials and studies, recruiting around 10,000 participants each year.

We have developed effective high-throughput models involving a highly skilled multi-disciplinary team (MDT). These have been successfully used to deliver vaccine trials, including recruiting nearly 900 participants in COVID vaccine studies. The Trust has world-leading specialist services, including centres for neurology, dermatology, renal medicine, adult inherited metabolic disorders and intestinal failure. It hosts the Greater Manchester Major Trauma Hospital, two of the three primary stroke units in Greater Manchester, as well as a designated hyperacute stroke research centre, a specialist neonatal centre and the largest upper Gastrointestinal (GI) service in England.

Our expertise also includes critical care, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and neurodegeneration, diabetes and endocrinology, pain, renal medicine, cardiology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, clinical haematology and ophthalmology. We have the largest Ears, Nose and Throat (ENT) patient population in Greater Manchester. Within our three dedicated clinical research facilities we have the infrastructure and capability to run Phase 1-4 trials and broad experience in Clinical Trials of Investigational Medicinal Products (CTIMPs), observational and device studies in a variety of specialties.

As a partner in the NIHR Manchester CRF and Innovate Manchester Advance Therapy Centre Hub (iMATCH), we deliver early phases studies (first in human through to Phase IIb/III) in adults and deliver complex, high-quality experimental medicine studies to time and target, driving faster translation from bench to bedside. As a NIHR Manchester CRF site, we work collaboratively with our CRF partner sites within Greater Manchester to enable delivery of trials requiring both clinical expertise and trials needing more complex trial interventions such as CAR-T therapy and stem cell transplantation. A joint research office offers a central point of contact and harmonised processes for contracts, compliance, budgets, auditing/monitoring and other support services.

We are recognised as a key leader in digital healthcare, with a single Electronic Patient Record, single Patient Administration System and single Laboratory Information Management System. In Salford, the integrated electronic health record system has brought together all General Practitioners (GP) and hospital records in the city for two decades. The Salford sample processing and biorepository facility operates to Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Human Tissue Authority (HTA) regulatory standards. It holds tens of thousands of vials of biofluid material or DNA from a range of specialties.