Medical research charities are an integral part of the UK’s health research system. They respond to the priorities of people living in the UK and ensure that research into diseases and medical conditions is relevant, necessary and impactful. They fund research at all stages of the pathway from the lab to the clinic and support the people and infrastructure behind the research. In this way, they enable breakthroughs that would not otherwise have been possible.
Tracking and demonstrating impact is not easy or straightforward. Transformative breakthroughs involve many different players working collaboratively and in sequence, often in non-linear paths and involving dead-ends or unexpected turns. And most of all, impact takes time. For charities to map their contribution to these breakthroughs, they must routinely collect research outputs and outcomes – steps along the way to impact - from their researchers.
Some AMRC members use an online tool called Researchfish that allows them to collect the outputs and outcomes of their research funding from researchers over time. Collecting data in this consistent way allows us to pool data together from many different charities and perform a cross-sector analysis of the outcomes of the research funded by our members. In addition, because other major funders in the UK use the platform, it allows us to look at AMRC data in a wider context of public funding.
We are proud to share this new report that shows what research funded by AMRC members can achieve, highlights examples of excellence, and puts charities’ role into the context of the wider research system. It follows on from our 2017 and 2019 impact reports, incorporating three more years of Researchfish data and new stories of how charity-funded research has impacted patients and society. The report is structured around three important ways in which charities add immense value:
You can download a PDF version of this report and there is also an accompanying infographic.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].
We would like to thank the Medical Research Council, Interfolio UK, and all participating organisations for making this report possible.
This report was published on 15 November 2021.
The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) is a membership organisation representing over 150 charities in the UK. AMRC member charities collectively invested £1.7 billion in medical research in the UK in 2020, and an impressive £14.5 billion over the past decade.
Every year, people living in the UK donate hundreds of millions of pounds to charities they believe in so that they can fund medical research that will improve lives. Charities must report back to their supporters to show that money being donated is being used wisely. Many fundraising charities publish impact reports to show the numerous ways they have made a difference.
A core part of our organisational strategy is to champion the unique voice of the medical research charity sector. To do this, we help our members highlight the wide-ranging impact that their investment and activity has in the health and medical arena.
AMRC is in a unique position to analyse research outputs and outcomes across multiple charity funders. This type of cross-sector analysis provides a compelling insight into the impact of the medical research sector as a whole and helps present Government, policy makers and the public with a view of the sector.
The data behind the report was obtained from a subset of our members who use Researchfish to track the impact of funded research. Researchfish is an online tool that is used to collect data on the outputs and outcomes of research from grant holders.
Researchfish began as a project by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in 2008 in response to the MRC’s need for a consistent way to monitor their research portfolio and to collect information on the outcomes of their funding. It was based on a question set developed to evaluate the impact of Arthritis Research Campaign’s funding. It was rolled out to a much broader array of funders from 2012 onwards when a federated version of the service was launched. Since 2014 all seven UK research councils (now UKRI) have made submitting data via Researchfish a mandatory requirement for grant holders.
A wide range of other funders, including NIHR and many AMRC charities, now use the platform. Researchfish has substantial coverage of public research funded in the UK, as well as being used by international funders. In 2019 Researchfish joined Interfolio, a company that provides software to help universities streamline their processes for academic hiring, review, promotion, and scholarly activity tracking. A shared use of the system across funders helps to reduce the reporting burden on researchers.
We have been collaborating with MRC and Researchfish since 2013, and Interfolio UK more recently, to allow our smaller member charities the opportunity to use Researchfish at a discounted rate. This collaboration has also enabled us to pool together sector data, support members with data analysis and demonstrating impact, and publish three sector impact reports. In this report, which is the third in the series, we have also included several analyses from a wider Researchfish dataset that includes public funders of health and medical research in the UK.
A detailed description of the datasets used in this report can be found below, and the steps taken to prepare the data can be found here.
Most of the data included in this report comes from the AMRC dataset, which is self-reported outcomes reported by researchers funded by 49 different AMRC charities (the full list of charities can be found here). This subset of our membership is a diverse mix and includes charities who spend less than £500,000 per year on research, as well as those who spend well over £10 million.
The data was downloaded from Researchfish in July 2021. This includes more than 240,000 research outputs from 10,579 grants. The grants collectively represent £4 billion in total value and started between 1999 and 2021, with most starting between 2014 and 2019. Grants vary in duration from 1 to 9 years, with most grants lasting for three years.
Charities use different types of grants to support research, ranging from short pilot grants to large multi-project programme grants, and from studentships to support trainee researchers and PhD students to Chair positions that support senior academics. A table with a full breakdown of all the grant types in this dataset can be downloaded here.
In summary,
It should be noted that the data collected by Wellcome using Researchfish only represents a subset of Wellcome’s total charitable funding and is not representative of Wellcome’s full portfolio of funding. Details of Wellcome’s grant schemes which are included in this dataset can be found here. Further details about Wellcome’s grant funding can be found here.
Many AMRC charities choose to gather outcomes from research through methods other than Researchfish. The report contains data from less than a third of AMRC members and therefore this report does not comprehensively represent the impact of the UK medical research sector. In addition, the charities included in the dataset have been using the system for varying periods of time, with some only having started using it recently, and some for only particular funding streams. These caveats are further explained in a separate section below.
To supplement the data of AMRC charities, Interfolio UK conducted analyses for AMRC to explore research outputs attributed to AMRC charities and other UK public funders of health and medical research to date. We include the findings in the report (see here and here).
The UK public group includes public sector organisations based in the UK that use Researchfish and have a primary/exclusive focus on health or medical relevant research. These include the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council, UKRI (MRC), Chief Scientist Office (CSO) in Scotland, Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW) and the HSC R&D Division, Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland.
Note that some other UK public organisations may also have groups of grants that are health relevant within Researchfish, but as their primary/exclusive focus is not health or medical research, these grants are not included in this analysis.
All grants from the funders listed above that were in the Researchfish system as of June 2021, and that Interfolio UK had permission to include, were included in the analysis (13,717 AMRC grants and 30,038 public grants in total).
It is important to note some caveats that are relevant to both datasets:
In conclusion, the funders included have been using the Researchfish system for differing numbers of years and do not include all their research funding in the system. It should therefore be viewed as a subset of research outcomes from charitable and public funding of health and medical research.