By Professor Tim Curtis, Queen’s University of Belfast, and Dr Richard Siow, Kings College London, co-chairs of The Physiological Society project on knowledge exchange
This blog is related to The Society’s upcoming report ‘Translating UK knowledge and research into impact: Physiology and Knowledge exchange’. Register for the report launch on Monday 25 January at 14:00 – 15:00 GMT here.
The events of 2020 have brought into sharp focus the insight and leadership that physiology can offer beyond the lab and the academic community. The Physiological Society’s Questions from the front line page, answering clinical questions about treating patients infected with Covid-19 as well as the speed of progress in developing effective vaccines, have demonstrated the powerful impact that physiology can have on the world around us.
The Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the UK ending its membership of the European Union, has reinforced the symbiotic relationship between activities related to physiology and the wider national economy. As such, The Physiological Society decided to conduct research to identify the value of physiology’s contribution to the UK’s overall knowledge exchange output. Knowledge exchange is the multiple interactions between higher education institutions and businesses, public services, charities, public engagement, communities, policymakers and government to create societal and economic benefit. This project builds on work The Society has undertaken to better understand how its members’ research can support the Government’s ‘Ageing Society’ Grand Challenge outlined in the industrial Strategy through its 2019 report Growing Older, Better.
At the same time, in the knowledge exchange (KE) policy world, the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) is due to begin in 2021, as a response to the McMillan Review of Technology Transfer, which found that UK universities were competitive in technology transfer practice but required stronger leadership in KE.
The purpose of our project was to showcase and attempt to quantify the impact of physiology to KE. This means considering the achievements that physiology delivers for the economy, as well as for broader society through contributions to the public, business and communities. It provides a snapshot of the current value of physiology KE and provides some recommendations for fostering the best conditions for KE with some novel solutions and support for current mechanisms. The report also highlights the global importance and impact of UK-led KE, with case studies from collaborations in both India and China.
Although the report’s findings will be discussed in depth at the launch, we can say that of the universities that contributed data, an annual average of 11% of their overall KE activity – as reported to the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HE-BCI) – is related to physiology, including £61.9 million of contract research KE and 7% of intellectual property (IP) income.
Beyond this however, the project has also demonstrated how crucial it is to bring a diverse group of senior academics, knowledge exchange professionals, civil servants, industry representatives and policy experts together from across the nation to showcase the best in UK knowledge exchange for the global community.
It has been equally important to ensure that we have heard from physiologists at different stages of their careers to explore the extent to which perceptions about knowledge exchange are formed (and challenged where necessary) and demonstrate the real-world impact that physiology has. It has also identified some significant barriers including a lack of contracted time to undertake KE.
As such, The Society has recommended a greater focus on KE in its own offering to members as well as promoting the expansion of Knowledge Exchange Fellowships to build more opportunities into academic working patterns.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the project, particularly the members of the Advisory Group, those institutions that provided data on their physiology-related KE outputs and the members who responded to the survey on their experience of knowledge exchange. These have been the central strands of this project’s success, and we look forward to seeing the report being used as a template for other discipline-specific analyses and as a benchmark to see The Society’s progress in this area.
You can register for the report launch by 12:00 GMT on Monday 25 January 2020. The event will be a panel session with members of our Advisory Group, chaired by Professor Graeme Reid from NCUB and will include opening remarks from Professor Melanie Welham from BBSRC.
Please note that all views expressed on The Physiological Society’s blog reflect those of the author(s) and not of The Society.