New figures released by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) reveal Moorfields Eye Hospital as one of the leading NHS trusts in London for clinical trial recruitment.
For the financial year 2024/25, NIHR Moorfields Clinical Research Facility (CRF) recruited 5,071 participants to 52 studies, placing it first among specialist trusts and among the top ten sites for recruitment among all trusts in London.
This year’s number of trial participants at Moorfields is an increase of over 150% from pre-Covid levels, when recruitment peaked at 2,008 for the year 2020/21.
Sobha Sivraprasad, Director of the Moorfields CRF, said: “I am delighted to see such a sharp increase in recruitment compared to where we were just after the Covid pandemic. This is the result of a concerted team endeavour, and I would like to thank the staff members and patients who have given their time and energy to enabling medical discovery at Moorfields.”
The rise in participants has been supported by strategic efforts to boost recruitment of diverse trial participants, especially from underrepresented communities. Moorfields CRF Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion strategy has resulted in dramatically boosting the number of participants who record their ethnicity in the past year from 52% to 89%, enabling richer analysis of trial results.
Recruitment has been strengthened by Research Opportunities at Moorfields (ROAM)*, an online gateway where anyone with an eye condition, as well as healthy volunteers, can register to participate in current and future clinical trials. ROAM now has over 4,000 registered participants, and continues to grow thanks to signposting across the hospital’s sites and through Friends of Moorfields volunteers.
Moorfields CRF has also benefitted from advanced digital infrastructure that is now closely integrated into the research team’s activity.
These initiatives build on the CRF’s position as the world’s largest ocular experimental medicine facility, with a specialist inventory of ophthalmic imaging and vision assessment devices.
The NIHR clinical trial data for London was made public to highlight the institute’s campaign, Be Part of Research, which aims to get more people involved in research.
Click here to read the NIHR press release.
19 June 2025