Manage your project

You will have already considered how to engage patients, carers and the public as part of your application. 

All NIHR-funded researchers are encouraged to involve patients, carers and the public throughout planning and delivering their research. Researchers are encouraged to evaluate the effectiveness of their patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) and required to report on PPIE in the final report for their project. 

Read more advice on how to involve patients, carers and the public in research. 

Alongside our Briefing Notes for Researchers, the UK Standards for Public Involvement are a good resource to consider when thinking about involving patients, carers and the public. They are a description of what good public involvement looks like and encourage approaches and behaviours that are the hallmark of good public involvement such as flexibility, sharing and learning and respect for each other

Find out more about the UK Standards for Public Involvement

The NIHR funds research by contracting researchers’ organisations on behalf of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to perform individual research projects. We use contracts that differ slightly depending on what sort of organisation the lead researcher is based in.

Read about how we contract with researchers on our contracts page.

NIHR-funded researchers need to register their study with a relevant database and seek regulatory approval. We also expect NIHR-funded researchers to adhere to the highest standards of research governance.

More information is available on our regulatory approval, registration and governance page.

NIHR-funded intellectual property can take a wide range of forms, including know-how, data sets, copyright, trademarks and patents.

We work with researchers to ensure that the intellectual property generated from NIHR funding is secured within an appropriate legal and contractual environment. This ensures that the NIHR, NHS and broader public sector have the best chance of realising benefits and achieving impact from the research that we fund.

Read more about our approach to intellectual property.

The NIHR Study Support Service, run by the NIHR Clinical Research Network, helps researchers plan, set up and deliver high quality research to time and target in both the NHS and in the wider health and social care environment.

Find out more about how the NIHR Study Support Service can help deliver your research.

When your project starts, you will be required to provide regular progress reports. Your study spending will also be monitored against targets set during start-up.

More information is available on our progress reports page.

All researchers funded by NIHR research programmes are required to submit a final report on their project. Researchers must provide a draft final report to the relevant research programme team within 14 days of their contract completion date or date of termination

For five of our research programmes, the final report is published in NIHR Journals Library. More information on submitting your final report is available in the Information for Authors section of the Journals Library website.

Researchers should acknowledge the NIHR's role in any outputs from their funded research, and may also be required to notify NIHR of forthcoming outputs. Researchers can also use the NIHR brand on some outputs.

Read more in our outputs and branding page.

We ask NIHR-funded researchers and trainees to track and measure outputs, outcomes and impacts during their funding award and for at least five years afterwards.

You’re required to report this information once a year through Researchfish, an online data collection platform used by over a hundred funders. The information you submit allows us to demonstrate the difference that your research project has made, make the case for continued applied health research funding and evaluate the most effective ways to allocate it.

More information is available on our reporting impact page.