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About

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the nation's largest funder of health and care research and provides the people, facilities and technology that enables research to thrive.

NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs) support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems.

The NIHR ARC East Midlands (EM) is one of 15 ARCs across England, part of a £135 million investment by the NIHR to improve the health and care of patients and the public. 

About our work

Research is the cornerstone of health and social care, nothing should be brought into practice without a solid evidence base – a new intervention needs to be proven. On average it takes more than 17 years for best practice generated through research to reach frontline practice and be adopted, our aim is to significantly speed up this process.

We do this by testing and refining the learnings from research through collaborations. ARC EM is made up of local providers of NHS and care services, patient groups, commissioners, local authorities, universities, industry and charities.

These collaborations work together to conduct high quality, generalisable, applied health and care research that addresses the specific health or care issues in the East Midlands region, leading to the development of evidence-based frameworks, which drive up standards of care and saves time and money.

Vision, Mission, Objectives

Our vision is to help people live “healthier living for longer independently

Our mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of people by working collaboratively with our partners to tackle health and care priorities through research and by translating research findings into everyday practice.

We will do this by:

  • Improving patient outcomes and supporting the delivery of positive service change through the conduct and application of relevant research
  • Co-producing and delivering a programme of high-quality, cost effective applied health and care research
  • Providing opportunities for engagement and participation to enable end-users of research and other stakeholders to shape its selection, design, delivery, dissemination, implementation and impact
  • Developing and sustaining successful partnerships across health, care, industry, academia, the voluntary sector and public/patient groups to support the health and social care partners to meet locally identified priorities
  • Engaging with our stakeholders and the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network to ensure the evidence we produce is implementation ready
  • Increasing capacity and capability in the East Midlands to conduct high quality health research, apply research evidence and evaluate its use