Vascular Research Priorities to Evidence

This meeting provided an opportunity to hear about what has been happening since the UK Vascular Priority Setting Project established a series of ‘top 10’ research priorities for vascular conditions. These important areas for research were identified jointly by patients, carers and vascular health professionals. As a reminder, the full report is available at www.jvsgbi.com¹

Professor Ian Chetter, Chair of the Research Committee VSGBI and Chair of the event said, “It was fantastic to see so many colleagues from across all areas of the vascular profession, coming together to hear about this important work. It is vital that the vascular community makes full use of the vascular priorities and focuses research efforts in these areas that will have the most impact”.

In the first session, attendees learnt about the nine vascular special interest groups (SIGs) that are helping to progress research in these priority areas and heard about plans for developing projects and funding applications. The second session provided examples of recently funded projects that are starting to address these priorities. During the final session, there were fantastic presentations from the NIHR Academy, NIHR Industry and the RCS who provided valuable insights about different opportunities available for support and collaboration.

Attendees were also given a preview of the UK Vascular Clinical Trials Network and project work that is being led by the Vascular Surgical Speciality Leads (and Associate SSLs). A new website: Vascular Research UK is currently in development and will act as a central point of information and collaboration for UK vascular research – watch this space.

Professor Chetter concluded, “I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone for bringing their expertise and experience and engaging in constructive and open discussions throughout the day. We will continue work to raise the profile of the research priorities and look forward to sharing ongoing progress at future meetings”.

The Vascular Research Priorities are freely available to be researched and anyone who is interested about the meeting, the Vascular Research Priorities or the SIGs can contact [email protected]