He writes:
Alongside the excellent care our staff are delivering, we are using our tremendous research capabilities to better understand COVID-19 and its successful management, including development of innovative approaches to testing and treatment.
Professor John Bradley
National studies that we are supporting in Cambridge Hospitals include: PRIEST (Pandemic Respiratory Infection Emergency System Triage) to optimise the triage of people using the emergency care system, RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COvid-19 thERapY), a trial of potential therapies that can be adapted to introduce new treatment arms as potential therapies emerge, and REMAP-CAP (Randomised, Embedded, Multifactorial, Adaptive Platform trial), a trial designed to evaluate a number of treatment options simultaneously and efficiently in critically ill patients.
We have also developed a new research resource in the NIHR COVID-19 BioResource, which will allow all patients admitted to Cambridge hospitals to participate in research studies by providing biological samples and health information. We have recruited over 100 BioResource participants, and the first samples have already been processed for analysis. The NIHR COVID-19 BioResource will be instrumental in understanding why the virus affects people in such different ways and identifying new treatments.
Our SAMBA (simple amplification-based assay) point of care test is already helping us rapidly find out whether patients have COVID-19 and ensure that they receive the right treatment in the right ward of the hospital.
We would like to thank all of the clinical and research staff who have made these remarkable achievements possible in such a short period of time, as well as all of the patients who have participated in our studies and made such a valuable contribution to improving care and treatment for COVID-19.