Glossary
Clinical Research - can be classified as either health and social care research or clinical trials.
Clinical Trial - research studies that test medical, surgical, or behavioural intervention in people, and conducted in specialist clinical trial units.
Health and Social Care Research - any health or social care related research that involves humans, their tissue and/or data. It is often conducted in public services such as the NHS or social care settings, but that is not always the case.
Research Governance - is an important part of Clinical Research and applies to everyone connected to it, whether as a chief investigator, care professional, researcher, their employer(s) or support staff. Research governance is needed to; safeguard participants in research, protect researchers/investigators (by providing a clear framework within which to work), enhance ethical and scientific quality, mitigate risk, monitor practice and performance, promote good practice and ensure that lessons are learned.
Sponsor - The role of the sponsor is to ensure health and social care research projects are legally compliant with regulatory processes so that high quality reputable research output is achieved. There are also similar legal requirements for other clinical research to have a sponsor, such as clinical trials of medicinal products or medical devices. For non-commercial research, the sponsor is usually the substantive employer of the researcher leading the project, or in cases of student researchers, the institution where the student is registered.