Board will provide £10m in grants for medical researchers

The Health Research Board has announced £10 million in grants for academic and hospital medical researchers.

This is the largest single research allocation yet made by the board, which is funded by the Department of Health and Children.

It is four times the amount of money available to the board last year for investment in medical research here. The large increase comes via a new programme which will make £5 million available to support five-year studies.

Each year the board funds small-scale individual research projects in the universities, institutes and hospitals and this year its budget for this has doubled to £5 million.

The funds will be used to support more than 60 projects, looking at subjects such as screening methods for identifying cancer risks, measuring recovery after strokes, identifying the levels of hepatitis and HIV in prisoners and better treatments for cystic fibrosis.

The board has received a further £5 million to support a new funding programme which will support large, long-term research projects.

The funding is sufficient to back between five and 10 of these projects, and the board is inviting research teams to submit bids for this money.

The projects will be assessed by international specialists before any award is made, according to Dr Mairead O'Driscoll of the board's Medical and Health Services Research Division. The projects must also show "their relevance to health and social gain", she added.

In particular the board is anxious to support the subsequent "translation of research", bringing research discoveries out of the lab and into hospital practice.

Areas of interest to the board include clinical research, epidemiology, primary care, nursing and midwifery.

"We also hope to keep in the area of public health," Dr O'Driscoll added, with studies in areas such as health services research and public health policy.

According to the board, this is one of the first times that funding has been made available for a dedicated research programme in nursing research.

"This is the largest amount of funding ever made available in one year for research related to health and well-being in Ireland," the board's chairman, Prof Michael Murphy said.