The Health Research Authority (HRA) is offering a new and exciting opportunity for senior, experienced members of the professional pharmacy community working in health and care research. These roles will contribute to improving study set-up by streamlining processes and supporting sites to take assurances, to reduce the time taken to set up research to 150 days or less, in line with the ambitious government target.
We are seeking expert input and leadership to support this work, and appointments will be made from this pool of experienced professionals. Roles will be fixed-term secondments, for one year with flexible whole-time equivalents, recognising that they will be undertaken alongside existing professional responsibilities.
Successful individuals will work on behalf of the HRA to help develop improvements in set-up and technical assurances provided for research involving pharmacy. We aim to support the NHS and Health and Social Care organisations (HSC Northern Ireland), reducing the need for local duplication where study level assurances and information can be provided, improving time to study activation in the UK.
Successful individuals will work closely with HRA staff and existing experts who advise us, to support change in the NHS and HSC (Northern Ireland), encourage more colleagues to become registered technical reviewers, and to provide expertise and advice to industry sponsors and our UK partners.
Main duties of the job
* Help HRA increase central technical reviewer capacity so there are registered pharmacy reviewers in every NHS/HSC organisation selected to be a chief investigator or participating site.
* Help NHS/HSC organisations develop consistent approaches to study setup in Pharmacy, building a standard way of operating when setting-up research.
* Recommend improvements that could deliver quality Sponsor information and pharmacy technical information for set-up.
* Deliver an agreed work package to develop and test new initiatives and existing assurances to improve their impact on site set-up, removing unnecessary duplication of activity where possible.
* Further improve effectiveness and use of lead pharmacy reviews linking early information provision to feasibility at site selection, through to set-up and NCVR.
* Help to develop and implement improvement initiatives that will strengthen industry confidence and study start‑up timelines.
* Contribute to the development of ideal pathway models aligned with the embedding of study-wide assurance approaches and information for site set‑up within digital research systems.
* Contribute to the production of evidence for a long‑term operating model by December 2027.
About us
At the HRA, we are committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive working environment where we actively invest in the development and empowerment of our staff, enabling them to perform at their best. We strive to promote a healthy workplace culture where wellbeing, collaboration, and professional growth are valued and encouraged.
Working at the HRA, we support flexible working, recognising that home based or hybrid arrangements provides us with the most productive environment to work well. Where possible, we'll offer a working pattern that suits you.
The HRA offers home based contracts for all locations. Newcastle, Manchester and Nottingham based staff can be office based and hybrid working arrangements are also possible. We encourage you to speak with us to explore how this could be accommodated.
We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know from experience that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger, more creative workplace that helps us to deliver the best services. We welcome applications which represent the rich diversity of our community: age, disability, gender identity and expression, ethnicity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and other diverse characteristics, and we have policies in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process.
Person Specification
Education/Qualifications
* Registered pharmacist – Employed within a research active organisation with a wide range of portfolio clinical trials, including CTIMPs.
* GPhC registration
Professional appointments
* Employed within a research active organisation with a wide range of portfolio clinical trials, including CTIMPs.
Knowledge, skills and experience
* Significant evidence of management responsibility of pharmacy clinical trial services.
* Evidence of training and audit experience.
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