On this page
What is a clinical academic?
Clinical academics work in health and social care while researching ways to improve patient outcomes and encompass a range of professionals, including:
- Medicine
- Dentistry
- Nursing
- Midwifery
- Allied health care professionals
- Other public health professionals
“Clinical academics are the bridge between scientific discovery and better patient care – their expertise drives innovation in the NHS and keeps the UK at the forefront of medical advances. They are key to strengthening the UK’s research ecosystem, improving the health of the UK and driving economic growth.”
Professor Rosalind Smyth CBE FMedSci, Vice President (Clinical) at the Academy of Medical Sciences
Why are clinical academics so important?
Research has shown that:
- Clinical research drives innovation to make the NHS more sustainable and deliver better patient outcomes. Clinically trained research staff play a central role in innovations that improve treatments, interventions, diagnosis and prevention strategies. Research-active hospitals consistently show lower mortality rates.
- Clinical research attracts major inward investment from global industries who choose to base their biomedical research bases in the UK.
There are also benefits for clinical staff who want to engage in research, including a more varied and flexible career path, opportunities for collaboration and personal development, working at the cutting edge of new developments, and reduced burnout.
What action is needed?
The future of clinical research is under threat due to the decline in clinical academics, both in absolute numbers and in proportion to the expanding NHS workforce. Key challenges and solutions to this issue have been identified in reports commissioned by the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research.
Urgent action is required to address falling numbers of clinical researchers and meet the needs of the nation’s health and economy.
What is the Academy doing?
Supporting clinical academics is a critical priority for the Academy. We provide grant funding and programmes to support clinical academics. We also support efforts to convene and coordinate policy action, bringing together stakeholders involved in funding, training and supporting the clinical academic career pathway.
We are committed to working with funders (including charities), universities, the NHS and industry to increase recognition of this vital part of the research workforce and to help reverse the decline in clinical academic numbers.
There are also principles and obligations of all UK institutions and clinical trainees in receipt of nationally competitive funding for clinical academic research training.
Our statement of ambition and intent
In July 2025, we convened a Clinical Academic Summit, bringing together stakeholders from across the UK to share national and regional examples of innovative models for creating clinical academic posts, and to consider how to do this more effectively at scale. Attendees included funders and individuals from industry, the NHS and universities.
Key themes identified during the summit have been used to produce a statement of ambitions and intent for creating new UK clinical academic posts.
Read our statement of ambition and intent
Research commissioned by the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) has identified a need to create a common and visible national clinical research career pathway across funders, to provide a visible coherent UK offer.
To support the funder-facing deliverables of this report, the Academy has convened a task and finish group of funders from across the devolved administrations, chaired by Professor Rosalind Smyth CBE FMedSci, Vice President (Clinical) of the Academy.
This group has developed a simplified map of funder offerings for the different stages of a clinical academic career, with unified terminology and standardised entry requirements. The map has been published on the Clinical Academic Training and Careers Hub (CATCH), which is hosted by the Medical Schools Council.
As a group, we will:
- Continue to improve this map as further opportunities emerge to align funding for clinical academics
- Increase the map’s interactivity in the longer term
- Work to address the other funder-facing deliverables of the OSCHR reports, which include identifying and addressing gaps in support and increasing flexibility of schemes
- Coordinate with the NMAHP Clinical Researcher Implementation group to join up our activities in the clinical academic space
The Academy informs policy to recognise the vital role of clinical academics and to identify how we can best recognise their contributions. This work takes several forms, but has included:
- Incentivising and monitoring the inclusion of clinical academics in the Research Excellence Framework
- Identifying ways to enhance or align data collection on clinical academics
- Contributing to strategies that seek to improve the life sciences talent pipeline, including the Spending Review, 10-year Health Plan for England, Industrial Strategy, and Life Sciences Sector Plan
- Informing reviews, such as NHS England’s Medical Training Review.
The Academy is the secretariat of UK Clinical Research Collaboration, a forum for partners to work together to transform the clinical research environment in the UK.
We also engage with key stakeholder groups involved in the clinical academic training pathway, including through:
Partners
The Academy works in partnership with key stakeholder groups across the research ecosystem, thanks to the support of our Fellows and through our policy, grants and programmes teams.
These groups include:
- The Academy’ Funders Group:
- Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Department of Health and Social Care, Health and Care Research Wales, Scotland Chief Scientist Office, Health and Social Care Northern Ireland
- Medical Schools Council, Dental Sciences Council, Council of Deans of Health
- Wellcome, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation
- Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) Task & Finish groups
- NMAHP Clinical Researcher Implementation Group, led by Professor Jane Coad
- Medical Schools Council Executive Board and NHS England Medical Training Forum
- Royal Colleges, including Royal College of Physicians and Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Research Group
- University mission groups, including Russell Group
- NHS representatives, including UK Research and Development Leaders (UKRD)
- Postgraduate deaneries, including Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans (CoPMeD)
Please contact Daniel Wake (d[email protected]) to let us know how we can work with you in this important area.
Clinical Academic Summit 2025
Strong clinical academic partnerships, at a local and regional level, are essential to the strategic development of new clinical academic positions. Despite the challenging financial constraints to the NHS and university sector, there are many recent examples where these partnerships have been successful.
In 2025, the Academy convened a Clinical Academic Summit to bring together a range of stakeholders across the UK, to share national and regional examples of innovative models for creating clinical academic posts, and to consider how to do this more effectively, at scale. This included representatives from funders, industry, the NHS and universities.
Key themes identified during the summit have been used to produce a statement of ambitions and intent for creating new UK clinical academic posts.
Read our statement of ambition and intent
Case studies
To inform discussions at the summit, the Academy developed a series of case studies on local, innovative models for creating clinical academic posts, including:
- The MRC Medicines Development Fellowship Programme
- Cambridge University Health Partners
- Catalys – the Manchester Clinical Academic Centre
- Liverpool’s Finn Fellowships
- University of Glasgow Post Certificate of Completion of Training (post-CCT) Fellowship Scheme
These provide examples of the goals, development processes, challenges and impact of creating new clinical academic posts. We hope that these case studies will help inspire the development of further partnerships.
Read our case studies
Please contact Emily Heathward ([email protected]) if you would like to share examples of your own partnership working in support of clinical academics.
provides a range of grants, career development programmes and events for postdoctoral biomedical and health researchers with a clinical degree.
Grants
Career development support