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Education & Funding

Attributing the costs of health research (AcoRD guidance)

Research should be viewed as a core function of the NHS and the NHS throughout the UK is committed to promoting and conducting research to improve current and future health & social wellbeing and to improve NHS patient care services. While the NHS must play its full part in supporting research it is important that the cost of that research is identified and properly funded.

Scotland follows the UK–wide Attributing the costs of health research (AcoRD guidance).
This provides a framework for the NHS and its partners to identify, attribute and recover the various costs associated with research in the NHS, in a transparent, robust and consistent manner.

The AcoRD guidance was adopted in June 2012, and provides a mechanism for identifying costs to studies, categorises these as either Research, Support or Treatment. AcoRD applies to all research taking place in the NHS.