A wide range of inspiring finalists were celebrated during a special evening to acknowledge the staff behind the incredible health and care research that has taken place in Greater Manchester during the pandemic.

NIHR CRN Greater Manchester’s Evening of Excellence 2021, sponsored by Syneos Health, took place on Thursday 18 November 2021 and recognised the valuable achievements made in the delivery of COVID-19 and non-COVID research during the period March 2020 to August 2021.

During the event winners were not chosen, instead, each successful nominee across the 11 categories shared the spotlight in equal measure. Nominations were open to individuals and teams in research delivery across Greater Manchester, East Cheshire and East Lancashire.

Health Innovation Manchester featured in two categories:

• Inspiring Inclusive Involvement: The Greater Manchester Public and Community Involvement and Engagement Forum
  The nomination stated: “This forum, made up of both staff and members of the public, have committed to work together to share knowledge, resources and new ways of doing things for the better. The benefits of working together have been immense; the ability to rapidly share new opportunities for involvement and engagement with maximum reach; making connections across different community groups to learn more about the work that takes place across the region; and sharing learning and resources and developing shared activities that meet the needs of diverse communities and helps them to get involved in research.” Find out more about the GM PCIE forum
• Community Catalysts: The Greater Manchester Care Record, including colleagues from The University of Manchester, NIHR GM Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, Health Innovation Manchester, Graphnet and Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership.
  The nomination stated: “The Greater Manchester Care Record collects data from various NHS services, such as GPs and hospitals. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and thanks to the hard work and collaboration of academia, industry, healthcare and local government, the GM Care Record has been rapidly accelerated into the fully fledged system that operates today. Research has been vital in the pandemic response. We quickly established a robust framework to allow access to the data in order to answer important research questions while simultaneously ensuring data security and good information governance. The team established the feasibility of incoming requests before approval from two independent groups. The team work closely with the analysts to provide an extract of data, minimised for their use, cleaned and ready for analysis. Work to date includes: an analysis of the reduction in diagnosis in primary care, the equity of the vaccine rollout and the effect of the pandemic on mental health.” Find out more about the GM Care Record

In addition to celebrating the contributions of our selected nominees, the evening featured insights, reflections and messages of thanks from a number of special guests from the Greater Manchester and national research system.

Sarah Fallon, Chief Operating Officer at NIHR CRN Greater Manchester, said: “We are delighted to say that we’ve had an enormous response to our Evening of Excellence, with superb submissions from across our Greater Manchester, East Cheshire and East Lancashire research community. It has given our judges great pleasure to watch the videos – each of which tells its own story of how our network has achieved so much – and we can’t wait to share them with everyone. Congratulations to everyone who’s been selected and thank you very much to all staff who took the time to nominate someone.”