Why Recruit with PCRNI?
Why Recruit in Primary Care?
Recruiting in the primary care sector gives sponsors faster, smarter access to broad, real-world patient populations where healthcare truly happens. Primary care offers unrivalled reach across common and chronic conditions, enabling rapid patient identification, strong engagement, and higher retention through trusted clinician–patient relationships. By embedding research into everyday care, sponsors benefit from quicker recruitment, streamlined delivery, and high-quality, representative data—making primary care a powerful, efficient platform for successful
Why Recruit with Primary Care Research NI?
PCRNI provides a dedicated, agile team of experienced GPs, pharmacists, academics, research nurses, and project management support to deliver studies reliably and at pace.
With multi-million-pound investment from government and industry, and strong collaboration across primary care, academia, and industry, our multi-agency network is designed to accelerate study set-up and reduce participant recruitment timelines—helping sponsors achieve results faster.
Why Recruit in Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland offers fast, efficient access to high-quality primary care research with a national strategy to reducing study start up times.
Northern Ireland works within communities that experience the greatest levels of socio-economic deprivation in the UK, where health inequalities are profound and suicide rates remain unacceptably high. These challenges reflect the cumulative impact of poverty, unemployment, trauma, and limited access to resources on both physical and mental health. Clinical studies offer the opportunity to support people living in these areas, ensuring that research addresses real-world needs, reduces health inequalities, and contributes to meaningful improvements in care for those who are most vulnerable.
There are 305 GP Practices in Northern Ireland with 2,075,632 patients registered with a GP practice. PCRNI actively works with all GP Federation Support Units and Secondary Care sites in Northern Ireland
Who could you help?
Deep End Network
Northern Ireland communities rank amongst the highest socio-economic deprived in the UK with GPs Practices at the heart of the community to .
Rapid Participant Identification
Northern Ireland benefits from a dedicated national software system, GPIP, which coordinates GP data across the region at a national level. This integrated platform enables efficient and secure searching of anonymised patient records against predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, allowing researchers to rapidly identify potentially eligible participants for clinical trials.
By streamlining feasibility assessments and recruitment processes, GPIP enhances the speed, accuracy, and scalability of clinical research, supporting high-quality studies and improving access to trials for patients across Northern Ireland.
Agile Nursing Team
Our Agile Nursing team of Marian Chindedza, Patricia Quinn, Erin Collins and Kirsten Ross have several decades of experience in clincial trials across a range of clinical areas
Our agile, community-based nursing team brings research closer to patients, delivering a personal approach to research within the heart of the community. We work flexibly and collaboratively with other health and social care services across a wide range of therapeutic areas
Improved Recruitment
Patients can participate in research in familiar surroundings, with a trusted professional who is aware of their individual circumstances. With detailed access to patient notes and an holistic understanding of the patient, our doctors can rapidly identify and recruit appropriate participants.
Greater Research Equity
GPs Practices are at the heart of the community including our deep-end Practices which operate in the most socio-economic areas. Our Practices are aware of the challenges these communities face and tailor research to meet their needs.
Improved Participant Retention
Our people-centric approach in the heart of communities rapidly addresses any potential concerns participates have to build a trusted relationship. This leads to less participants leaving studies prematurely or missing clinical appointments.
Success Stories
Our team exceeded recruitment targets by 40%, in a complex and remote home care setting.
Our nursing team delivered high‑quality home‑based assessments for a complex study of ageing, including comprehensive health, hearing, cognitive, and functional testing.
This increased participant retention and ensured research equity through a community-based approach
Rapidly recruited 115 participants from the local community
Facilitated a colloboration between a South Belfast GP practice and Oxford University, ensuring representation from Northern Ireland in the study.
Linking research companies with appropriate primary care facilities to enable high‑quality research delivery.
Recruit with PCRNI
Partner with Primary Care Research Northern Ireland today to accelerate your clinical trial recruitment, gain direct access to engaged primary care practices, diverse patient populations, and proven delivery expertise that helps you meet recruitment targets with confidence.