Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
Last updated
The NIHR Research Delivery Network (RDN) is the operational infrastructure that gets a clinical, public health, or social care study actually running inside England’s health and care system — identifying sites, recruiting participants, and costing NHS support activity. It is not a funder: it does not award grants, and it is a distinct service from the NIHR funding programmes or the NIHR Academy fellowships that pay for a study in the first place. This page covers what the RDN is, why its name changed, how it is structured regionally, and how a study team actually engages it.
From CRN to RDN: what changed and when
Until 2023 this service was known as the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN), and that name still appears widely in older guidance, university research-office pages, and search results. On 14 November 2023, NIHR and the Department of Health and Social Care announced that a new NIHR Research Delivery Network would be created, commencing operation in 2024 to support the delivery of health and social care research in England. The rename reflected a broadened remit beyond clinical trials — the RDN explicitly supports public health and social care research delivery alongside clinical research, not clinical research alone. If you are working from documentation, contracts, or institutional pages that still say “CRN,” treat that as the same body under its previous name rather than a separate organisation.
Structure: 12 regional networks plus a coordinating centre
The RDN operates as a single network across England made up of 12 Regional Research Delivery Networks (RRDNs) and a national Coordinating Centre (RDNCC), working together under joint leadership rather than as separate competing bodies. Each RRDN covers a defined geography (for example North West, South Central, East of England, East Midlands, and West Midlands) and is typically hosted by an NHS organisation on behalf of the wider region. This regional structure is what a study team actually deals with day to day: site feasibility, local research capacity, and delivery support are handled at the regional level, while the Coordinating Centre sets national policy, performance standards, and cross-network systems.
What the RDN actually does for a study
Three things a study team gets from engaging the RDN, distinct from funding or ethics approval:
- Portfolio adoption. A study that meets NIHR’s eligibility criteria can be “adopted” onto the NIHR Research Delivery Network Portfolio, which makes it eligible for RDN support (site identification, recruitment support, performance monitoring) and, for many funders, is a prerequisite for accessing NHS service support costs. Adoption and portfolio management run through the Central Portfolio Management System (CPMS), the RDN’s study registration and tracking system.
- NHS support cost attribution. Working out which costs of running a study inside the NHS are “research costs” (funded by the study’s own budget) versus “NHS support costs” (funded separately, via the RDN, because they are activities the NHS would not otherwise be doing) is done using a Schedule of Events Cost Attribution Template (SoECAT) submitted alongside a study’s Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) application. This is a UK-specific compliance step with no direct US equivalent — it exists because NHS clinical activity delivered as part of a research study is funded through a different route than the study’s own grant.
- Site identification and recruitment delivery. The regional networks help identify NHS sites with the patient population and capacity to deliver a study, and provide delivery staff (research nurses, clinical research practitioners) who are RDN- rather than site-funded in many cases — the mechanism that lets smaller NHS trusts participate in national studies without carrying the full staffing cost themselves.
RDN versus the NIHR Research Support Service: two different jobs
The RDN is frequently confused with the separate NIHR Research Support Service (RSS), and the confusion is understandable because both sit under NIHR’s “support and services” umbrella and both grew out of network restructuring around the same period. The distinction that matters operationally: the RSS supports study design — methodology, statistics, and funding-application development, before a study has funding — while the RDN supports study delivery — site identification, NHS support costs, and recruitment, once a study is funded and needs to actually run. A well-run application typically uses both at different stages: RSS during design and grant-writing, then RDN portfolio adoption once the study is funded and ready to open at sites.
Who the RDN works with
The RDN sits alongside, and is distinct from, several other pieces of UK research infrastructure a study team will also encounter: the Health Research Authority (HRA), which handles the ethical and regulatory approval a study needs before it can start (via IRAS); Health and Care Research Wales, the equivalent delivery infrastructure for Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own separate equivalents); and a study’s Clinical Trials Unit (CTU), which provides trial design, statistics, and data management expertise rather than NHS delivery capacity. None of these bodies substitute for another — a multi-site NHS trial in England will typically need HRA/IRAS approval, RDN portfolio adoption, and (for a complex trial) CTU support, as three separate, non-overlapping steps.
Frequently asked questions
Is the NIHR part of the NHS?
No, not directly. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and works in partnership with the NHS, universities, and other organisations, but it is a distinct funding and research-delivery body rather than an NHS organisation itself. The RDN’s regional networks are typically hosted by NHS trusts on NIHR’s behalf, which is part of why the line between “NIHR” and “the NHS” is easy to blur in practice.
What is NIHR CPMS?
The Central Portfolio Management System is the RDN’s system for registering a study onto the NIHR Research Delivery Network Portfolio and tracking its delivery progress (recruitment against target, site activation status) once adopted. Study teams and their sponsoring organisation typically interact with CPMS during portfolio adoption and throughout the life of an adopted study.
Does a study need to be adopted onto the RDN Portfolio?
Adoption is not legally mandatory for every study, but it is a practical prerequisite for most RDN delivery support and, for many funders and NHS trusts, for accessing NHS support costs at all — so in practice, most funded clinical, public health, and social care research intended to run at NHS sites in England goes through portfolio adoption.
Sources: NIHR and Department of Health and Social Care, “New NIHR Research Delivery Network created,” GOV.UK, 14 November 2023; NIHR Research Delivery Network (rdn.nihr.ac.uk) “About us”; NIHR “Research Delivery Network” support-and-services page (nihr.ac.uk).
