CIRU & COVID-19

The Commonwealth Innovation has listed The University of Southampton as experts in relation to the coronavirus and have included some of our very own members from CIRU as leading experts. More info can be found here. Our unit and its service groups have been contributing towards COVID-19 research and providing support throughout the pandemic. More details below.

COVID-19 saliva Testing Programme

Members of CIRU including the Head of Development David Miller, Data Analyst Pat Oxford, KITE’s Programmer Bart Feenstra, as well as our Director Professor James Batchelor have been working on a COVID-19 Saliva Testing Programme along with other University of Southampton staff, and colleagues from University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS). CIRU’s involvement includes the build of the online test registration site for participants, data visualization, as well as programme reporting. The programme has involved tens of thousands of participants and recently won the VC Public Good award.

RESIN- RESEARCH INVESTMENTS IN GLOBAL HEALTH SERVICE

Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health from our RESIN team has been providing significant expert commentary to the general public. He has been interviewed on numerous local and national news, including several interviews with the BBC, as well as on international TV and radio stations. Dr Head’s written quotes have appeared in all the major UK newspapers and hundreds of international media articles. Through the Research Investments in Global Health study, Dr Head and colleagues have generated data on historical levels of coronavirus R&D funding. This data has been presented at WHO headquarters in Geneva and incorporated into a scientific paper that is currently under review.

Examples of where Dr Head has been involved with the media are as follows:

Mainstream UK news: BBC, BBC with Fergus Walsh, Guardian, Daily Mail, and The Observer/The Guardian
Magazines: Wired, New Scientist and The Economist
UK TV: BBC Breakfast, Meridian Tonight and South Today
Radio: BBC Radio Solent Breakfast show, Five live, LBC and Talk Radio
International TV: TRT World, TV3, Ghana (9 mins 35), CNN and Reuters
Podcast: Triggernometry

The RESIN team have also put together an analysis of global public and philanthropic R&D investments related to coronavirus research. This covers the time period from the year 2000 – present day. This is a new resource that the team are continuously updating as new COVID-19 related award decisions are made and published. To access the coronavirsus R&D dashboard click the button below.

EDGE- the real-time clinical trial management programme

The EDGE Knowledge team are working closely with hospitals across the UK and abroad to support them in managing their research portfolio and specifically COVID-19 research. A large number of trials have been suspended whilst hospitals re-organise the delivery of their services, ensuring research continues to be delivered safely. The impact COVID-19 has had on the ability of everyone to safely carry out their role in research has led to a number of requests to our team to support and develop functions such as remote monitoring, which would support aspects of research management to be maintained. As these conversations continue we will keep everyone updated.

CORE- CLinical on-demand research

Our CORE team have just completed a COVID-19 POC observational study using ALEA eCRF, they are recording lots of data: medical history, medications, bloods, vital signs, NEWS2 score, screening for 20 odd pathogens (QIAstat) and recording what treatment patients have been given and length of stay, with particular interest in affected health workers. Now its LIVE, the team have begun seeing recruitment populate within the database.