Types of research supported

We fund lots of different kinds of research. We want to, firstly, fund research addressing questions that are relevant to patients today – what treatments work best, what they can do to help themselves. We then want to fund research about developing treatments for tomorrow and that means identifying the new areas of advance in knowledge, not only in arthritis but in other areas and bring those together and try and help understand what causes arthritis, how it can be prevented and treated, and that means beginning what can be a long process of starting to develop some of the newer drugs and new approaches to treatment. And I’ve talked about drugs but of course there are other ways of treatment that are very important. For example, most people are aware that physiotherapy, exercises and things like that can help them. But that’s not as simple as it sounds – what is the best exercise to be given for a particular condition, taking into account individual variation. Most people are also aware of joint replacement; many people will know someone who’s had a hip replacement or a knee replacement. But there’s an enormous number of unanswered questions about how these operations should be done, who they should be given to, what age people should be when they get their operation, what should be the post-operative care. So it’s some of these questions that we want to address.