Research & trials

20 Aug 2026 What happens to your referral Triage that works, referral management that the evidence says doesn't, waiting-list validation paid by the patient removed, and the fact that nothing anywhere defines what work belongs in general practice.

22 Jul 2026 The first time I met AI was 1993 In 1993 I spent two months testing whether a neural network could predict insulin doses better than a pharmacokinetic model. It couldn't — the data was the problem, not the maths. Thirty-three years on, it's a product you can buy.

2 Apr 2026 Research Delivery in Primary Care LinkedIn Identifies unreliable courier logistics for time-critical trial samples as an overlooked bottleneck in primary care research delivery, drawing on Cheshire and Mersey CRDC site experience.

26 Mar 2026 Any companies or organisations with a product or service looking for a primary care or… LinkedIn Offers his Cheshire team as a primary care or community partner for organisations applying to the NIHR i4i FAST funding call.

20 Mar 2026 Why is study set-up still so manual in 2026? LinkedIn Questions why trial site set-up still means repeatedly emailing CVs, GCP certificates and delegation logs to each sponsor, and calls for a single live source of truth for research sites.

16 Mar 2026 As many of you may know I'm always looking for ways to speed up clinical trial delivery. LinkedIn Seeks innovative tools to automate post-visit data upload to electronic case documents, a persistent bottleneck in clinical trial delivery.

13 Mar 2026 Today my surgery is posting 2 job adverts on NHS jobs to expand our clinical trials team. LinkedIn Neil's surgery recruits a junior research practitioner and an experienced research nurse to grow its commercial clinical trials portfolio.

28 Oct 2025 IT & AI Can Help Us Deliver Commercial Research at Scale LinkedIn Five ways IT and AI could enable research at scale: federated patient searches, in-consultation prompts, pre-populated e-worksheets, shared IMP tracking and remote site access.

25 Oct 2025 Are current ways of delivering trials working LinkedIn Argues current models for delivering commercial trials in general practice are slow and inefficient, with 300 practices competing for 15 places, and trails ideas for reform.

22 Oct 2025 One of the biggest challenges in scaling commercial research in primary care… LinkedIn Sets out a network model for handling Investigational Medicinal Products so commercial trials can scale across primary-care sites.

21 Oct 2025 Smarter Model for Primary Care Research LinkedIn Argues against every practice being a self-contained research site, proposing a layered network of recruitment sites, delivery hubs and super-hubs served by a flexible shared workforce.

20 Oct 2025 From Competition to Collaboration LinkedIn Proposes provider collaboratives with shared workforce, governance and pooled funding to deliver commercial trials at scale, formalised by joint venture agreements.

20 Oct 2025 Scaling Research in General Practice LinkedIn Sets out a staffing model for commercial trials in general practice — Sub-Investigators, research nurses, HCA technicians and a flexible staff bank — so PIs focus on oversight, not delivery.

22 Aug 2025 Not sure why this post didn’t get more attention- so reposting in case it was missed in… LinkedIn Reshares a study using temporal graph analysis of patient records to measure clinician-patient interaction intensity.

16 Aug 2025 Competition Time? LinkedIn After finding a far faster PC at another practice, proposes a benchmarking competition to find the slowest and fastest GP computers, using a tool that needs no admin rights.

10 Aug 2025 Clinical Trials LinkedIn Argues that training ever more practices to compete for scarce commercial trial places is self-defeating, proposing collaborative lead-site models with satellite practices instead.

14 Jun 2025 Dr Valeed Ghafoor fascinating post. LinkedIn Reflects on balancing individual and population health with limited resources, and floats a private complete care review service.

2 May 2025 R u a research trained and experienced nurse and or practitioner who lives/works within… LinkedIn An early feeler for a research-trained nurse or practitioner near South Cheshire, ahead of any formal job advert.

30 Apr 2025 My wife Dr Carolyn Paul presenting today in London at a research conference on patient… LinkedIn Notes his wife Dr Carolyn Paul presenting at a London research conference, drawing on her expertise in patient recruitment and retention.

11 Apr 2025 Commercial Research Sessions LinkedIn Neil's surgery-based trials unit recruits the first patient in Europe for an AstraZeneca study, prompting an offer of sessions on getting into commercial research.

18 Dec 2024 Final Primary Care Community of Practice Meeting LinkedIn Notes from the last CRN North West Coast community of practice meeting, arguing research study portals should support NHS single sign-on via smartcard or NHSmail.

14 Nov 2024 Is it time to revisit how Problems are coded in Primary care EPRs?' LinkedIn Argues primary care EPR problem coding needs metadata on who diagnosed, how and how certainly, illustrated with messy real cases.

19 Oct 2022 My wife Dr Carolyn Paul (right) who co-leads our joint cross practice clinical trials… LinkedIn Celebrates his clinical-trials co-lead and wife, Dr Carolyn Paul, recruiting the first North West patient onto a new study.

28 Mar 2022 Making clinical trials easier in Primary Care LinkedIn Ten practical suggestions for trial designers, from basing eligibility on routinely coded GP data and using local labs to dropping fasting requirements and involving GPs early.

4 Mar 2022 The future of general practice has been published.... LinkedIn Summarises the newly published vision for general practice, flagging salaried at-scale working, the NHS App as front door, and data sharing.

11 Feb 2022 My research team at Ashfields Primary Care Centre, Sandbach have been working with a… LinkedIn Explains how his Ashfields research team supplies ethically approved human biological samples to companies for testing.

24 Jul 2021 Practice managers please fill in this research survey! LinkedIn A short appeal shared via LinkedIn in 2021 asking GP practice managers to complete a research survey.

30 Jun 2021 Calling any private echo providers in South Cheshire or reasonable commute. LinkedIn Seeks a private echocardiography provider for a research study, wanting a couple of scans a month at his Sandbach practice.

15 May 2021 ok - so why is the easing of lockdown in jeopardy?' LinkedIn Asks why lockdown easing is at risk given the B.1.617 variant seems highly transmissible but mild in vaccinated people.

25 Mar 2020 Apologies if you are seeing this everywhere - but consider downloading this Covid-tracker… LinkedIn Encourages downloading the Guy's and St Thomas' ZOE Covid tracker and reporting daily to build big data.

20 Feb 2020 Are there any companies that specialise in point of sales customer satisfaction kiosks,… LinkedIn Seeks a company to trial point-of-sale patient-satisfaction kiosks in Cheshire practices as a possible NHS case study.

11 Jun 2019 Came across this fascinating article about a significant improvement in solar cell… LinkedIn Shares a solar-cell breakthrough led by Prof Tony Peaker, for whom he worked as an IT technician as a medical student.

30 Apr 2019 Wearables and Data Collection From paper diabetes diaries as a medical student to wearables and smartphone sensors: how continuous data capture could transform research, chronic disease self-management and prevention.

18 Apr 2019 ORCHA are doing some research around factors that would make HCPs more likely to… LinkedIn Flags a short ORCHA survey exploring what makes healthcare professionals more likely to recommend health apps to patients.

22 Sept 2018 Docman needs Alerts! Calls for patient-level alerts in Docman so safety-trained GPs spot serious adverse events among trial participants' letters, citing the workarounds the Salford Lung Study had to use.

25 Aug 2018 Here is a request from a contact: Clara Owen ' LinkedIn Passes on a Huddersfield University PhD survey seeking healthcare workers to explore moral development from training into practice.

14 Aug 2018 Online training tool needed for EPRs Argues primary care needs a structured competency framework and certified online training for EMIS and other EPRs, since most staff learn the systems by trial and error.

13 Jun 2018 Should my primary care EPR include a widget that tracks (or suggests) a differential diagnosis? Argues GP records should track a working differential diagnosis — showing what has been ruled in or out and why — rather than bare codes of uncertain provenance, and questions the SOAP model.

4 May 2018 Are you a research active GP practice looking to do more commercial research? LinkedIn Invites research-active GP practices to join a new directory helping commercial sponsors find experienced UK trial sites.

26 Mar 2018 Docman needs Alerts! Why Docman needs per-patient alerts: without them, GPs running clinical trials can miss the letters that trigger 24-hour serious adverse event reporting, as the Salford Lung Study found.

17 May 2017 Do you or anyone you know live within travelling distance of Nantwich or Sandbach and are… LinkedIn Seeks trial participants over 60 with gout on allopurinol near Nantwich or Sandbach for a University of Dundee treatment study.

13 Mar 2017 Met with Richard Cardow from Qardio discussing their MD portal for their products… LinkedIn Reports a meeting with Qardio about their QardioArm, Base and Core devices, exploring primary care adoption and a possible heart failure case study.

16 Dec 2015 Another View: of Progress (or Otherwise) A year-end whinge at GP IT's lack of progress: obsolete browsers and hardware, password overload, poor team messaging, glacial order comms and prescribing warnings that cry wolf.

21 Nov 2014 4GPs has developed a 12 point checklist to evaluate how well your GP federation is doing… LinkedIn Promotes 4GPs' twelve-point checklist for assessing GP federation performance, offering a discount in exchange for a marketing case study.

2 Mar 2013 Anyone know of any good research or case studies into how GP practice teams operate? LinkedIn Looks for research or case studies on how GP practice teams operate, particularly under a growing partnership.

24 Jul 2012 Another View: Ten Argues CCGs should mix best-of-breed cloud tools like Huddle rather than build one giant website, and imagines clinical suppliers running an Apple-style app store for NHS software.

26 Aug 2011 Go to loo> 8x a day ? LinkedIn Recruiting registered patients to take part in the practice's research study on overactive bladder.

22 Apr 2010 My Vision for Appraisals A critique of the user-unfriendly NHS Appraisal Toolkit, proposing open APIs so learning sites, courses and clinical systems could feed evidence straight into a central appraisal record.

17 Oct 2007 Book review: Belbin's team roles GP magazine Reviews Meredith Belbin's books on the nine roles in a team and describes how the partners of two merging surgeries used the questionnaire to check their mix.

12 Feb 2002 Best ways to improve data quality GP magazine Practical advice on getting a whole practice coding consistently, from Read code training and outside help to tackling one clinical area at a time.