Moorfields Eye Hospital Special Trustees

Funding of Research

The funding of research continues to be a major element of the Special Trustees' expenditure plan. During the period covered by this report, grants totalling £434,000 were provided to the Hospital to enable clinicians to carry out research.

All applications to the Special Trustees have been scrutinised by the Hospital's Research Director to ensure quality and apropriateness, and this has increasingly involved the use of external assessors. All projects are scrutinised by the Ethics Committee before being submitted to the Special Trustees.

The funds for research are provided from an appropriate special purpose fund, and from the £200,000 allocation for research made from the general funds. As well as providing support to larger projects, Special Trustees' funding continues to provide seed-corn funding for smaller projects, usually undertaken by junior doctors.

Once again, the Special Trustees have endeavoured to provide investment for the future research potential of the Hospital.

Support has been provided for two larger research teams, firstly in the form of funding for a senior clinical research scientists within the Wound Healing Research Group, and secondly for a scientist to support the Ocular Biomaterials Research programme.

The publication of a Joint Research Strategy between the Hospital and the Institute of Ophthalmology / UCL provided the opportunity for the Trustees to review their committment to funding research. The outcome of this review was a committment to funding a major expansion programme over the next three years. The committment from General Funds is for £350,000 in 1999/2000, £425,000 in 2000/2001 and £500,000 in 2001/2002.