From its roots in Salford’s diabetes clinics to pioneering real-world clinical trials, NWEH has spent a decade challenging how clinical research is delivered. 

Clinical trials are essential to developing new medicines, but the traditional model has its limitations. Patients are often recruited through research sites, assessed against tightly defined eligibility criteria and required to attend repeated appointments. The result is robust evidence, but the people who take part do not always reflect those who will ultimately receive the treatment in everyday clinical practice. 

For NWEH, this was a problem worth solving long before real-world evidence became a familiar term.

A different way to approach clinical research 

The origins of NWEH can be traced back to the early 2000s, when Professor Martin Gibson, a consultant physician specialising in diabetes and endocrinology in Salford, saw the potential of electronic health records (EHRs) to transform patient care. 

As primary and secondary care records became more connected, clinicians could gain a more complete picture of their patients. But the same information also presented a new opportunity: could routinely collected healthcare data help researchers identify eligible patients and deliver clinical trials more effectively? 

At the time, recruiting patients from primary care was a significant logistical challenge. Researchers often relied on individual GP practices to interpret study protocols, search their records and refer suitable patients to hospital. Gibson recognised that a more effective approach could make recruitment easier while helping research better reflect the populations receiving treatment. 

In 2007, he and his colleagues secured £3 million in funding from the North West Regional Development Agency to extend the Salford model across the wider North West. This laid the foundations for a new approach to clinical research, although turning the vision into a sustainable organisation would take time. 

The Salford Lung Study: putting the vision into practice 

The breakthrough came when a team from pharmaceutical company GSK was looking for a way to conduct a real-world study. This led to the Salford Lung Study (SLS), which began enrolling participants in 2012. 

The study was pioneering: it was the world’s first pragmatic, randomised trial to use electronic health record data to evaluate a pre-licensed medicine in routine clinical practice. 

By bringing research closer to everyday healthcare, the study demonstrated how real-world data could support a different approach to clinical trials. It also showed that robust safety monitoring could help researchers include patients with other health conditions who might traditionally have been excluded. 

The study generated more than 20 publications and helped establish the potential of digitally enabled, real-world research. It also provided an important foundation for the technologies and expertise that would become central to NWEH. 

From research project to independent company 

Building on this experience, NWEH was spun out of the University of Manchester and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust in 2016. 

The ambition was to take what had been developed through the Salford research environment and build solutions that could support clinical studies more widely. 

At the heart of this approach were two complementary technologies. FARSITE was developed to use electronic health record data to identify patients who may be eligible for clinical research, helping researchers move beyond conventional, site-based recruitment. ConneXon, NWEH’s clinical data platform, enables researchers to collect study-specific information alongside relevant data from electronic health records and other connected sources. 

Together, these capabilities support a more connected approach to clinical research: helping identify suitable participants, reducing unnecessary data entry and making it easier to conduct studies within routine healthcare settings. 

The journey has not always been straightforward. As NWEH’s founders recognised early on, developing new technology is only part of the challenge. The industry must also be ready to adopt new ways of working. 

Growing through collaboration

Over the past decade, NWEH has continued to develop its technology and expand its work with pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers and NHS partners. 

Its platforms have supported studies across a range of therapeutic areas, from respiratory disease and cardiovascular health to obesity and diabetes. In the ORION-11 study, FARSITE was used to identify and recruit participants, while work on studies such as VICTORION-Spirit has brought together multiple partners across the healthcare and research landscape. 

More recently, NWEH has continued to enhance its capabilities. Improvements to ConneXon include functionality designed to support faster, more accurate safety reporting, combining near real-time data with clinical oversight. Partnerships have also expanded the ways healthcare information can be used to support research. 

In one recent example, NWEH demonstrated the potential of FARSITE by recruiting 1,000 participants to a study in just six months, representing one-third of the study’s total target sample size. 

These achievements reflect a broader principle that has guided NWEH from the beginning: technology is most valuable when it addresses real challenges faced by patients, researchers and healthcare professionals. 

A changing clinical research landscape 

When NWEH’s journey began, using electronic health records to power clinical research was still an emerging concept. Today, healthcare data is more widely available, decentralised approaches are becoming more common, and there is growing recognition of the need to make trials more representative of real-world populations. 

The industry is also paying greater attention to the burden of participation and to the people who are missing from clinical research. Yet significant challenges remain, particularly in ensuring that research reflects the diversity of the populations who will use new medicines.

For NWEH, these developments reinforce the importance of its original vision. By using routinely collected healthcare data to identify participants and support study delivery, real-world research has the potential to make clinical trials more accessible, more representative and better aligned with everyday care. 

The next decade: bringing research closer to real life 

Looking ahead, NWEH aims to build on the capabilities developed in the UK and apply them across other healthcare systems. Advances in artificial intelligence, more personalised treatment approaches and evolving regulatory expectations may create further opportunities to rethink how clinical research is designed and delivered. 

The challenge will be to embrace these opportunities while maintaining the quality of evidence needed by researchers, pharmaceutical companies and regulators.

Ten years on from becoming an independent company, NWEH’s underlying ambition remains consistent: to use technology and real-world healthcare data to make clinical research work better for everyone involved. 

What began with clinicians looking for a better way to identify patients has developed into a broader effort to bring research closer to the reality of people’s lives. 

As NWEH looks to the future, the goal is clear: to bring exceptional care into everyday care, for everyone.