Network

A key focus of the Centre is to build collaborations with a network of stakeholders in a range of external organisations. These are detailed as follows:

Irish Primary Care Research Network (IPCRN) - The inaugural meeting of IPCRN (www.ipcrn.ie/) took place in September 2012, chaired by the incoming president of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and Emeritus Professor of General Practice at the University of Nottingham, Prof Mike Pringle. The IPCRN is a key component of our knowledge transfer strategy. Linking our research findings with quality improvement initiatives for participating GPs that enables generation of comparative clinical data that relate to the quality of care patients receive, focussed on prescribing, monitoring quality indicators for chronic disease (diabetes and heart failure being the initial clinical domains) and safe prescribing (potentially inappropriate prescribing in the elderly and safe prescribing indicators for pregnant women being the initial prescribing domains).

Irish Patients' Association – We are engaged with the Irish Patients Association in an effort to enhance our engagement with key stakeholders through the participation of patients in primary research studies. This network also serves to maximize our dissemination through this organisation.

HRB SPHeRE Programme – The Centre provides methodological support, training and supervision to the HRB Scholars who wish to complete research in primary care.

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) – We have collaborated with the RCPI to deliver the short course in research methods at the RCPI.

Health Intelligence Unit (HIU) – Collaboration with the Health Intelligence Unit (HIU) has resulted in the provision of access to the PCRS database for further studies including quality, safety and cost of prescribing at the primary/secondary care interface.

• International links – Researchers at the Centre have established a range of national and international collaborations through our work in prescribing, CPRs and multimorbidity.