A brand-new £1 million research facility is to be built at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, starting in April 2008: The Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (WTCRF).  Occupying the site of one of the current Wards, which will be relocated to make way, the WTCRF will be a flagship of paediatric research for the region, and will make the Trust’s research profile world class. Not only will the new Facility consolidate existing research facilities, but it will expand the Trust’s capacity enormously in the field of paediatric research and encourage clinical and nursing led projects, funded from a variety of sources and coordinated by an overseeing Scientific Committee, which will include active researchers from this Trust. 

The WTRCF will also work closely with the West Midlands Local Research Network (WMLRN), an already established research organisation through which many paediatric projects are already happening and for which Birmingham Children’s Hospital is already a regional centre.