Plans for £2 billion research partnership unveiled by NHS and UCL

Plans for a £2 billion partnership to create the largest biomedical research organisation in Europe were unveiled by four NHS hospitals and University College London last night.
The new venture is to be called UCL Partners and its aim is to establish London as an intellectual powerhouse for the invention of new drugs and treatments. University College London, its sister hospital UCLH, Great Ormond Street for children, Moorfields eye hospital and the Royal Free Hampstead are all involved in the set up of the venture.
All five organisations have a combined turnover of around £2 billion and collectively treat over 1.5 million patients a year and employ more than 3,500 scientists, senior researchers and consultants.
There has been widespread concern in the medical field that the UK would fail to compete in a global research market without a stronger collaboration between academic institutions and healthcare providers. Long-established partnerships between universities and hospitals in the US are included in the competition and the 16 hospitals that came at the top of the medical league tables in 2005 were all academic health science partnerships.
Malcolm Grant, president and provost of UCL, said: “We have chosen to concentrate on these areas because in all of them we are already leading the way in the UK or Europe. Our goal is to build on that reputation and become genuinely world-class in as many of those areas as possible.”