Opportunity profile: How to apply to be an NIHR reviewer

Helen Payne, senior programme manager at the National Institute of Health Research, explains to Helen Lock what academics should do to apply for any of the 82 vacancies advertised for members of its reviewing boards and panels.

This opportunity is for members of ‘panels’ and for ‘boards’. What’s the difference between the two?

Prioritisation panels look at the possible topics for research studies and try to identify the information that medical staff need to know the answers to most urgently. Panels require people with a lot of clinical practice experience, who are embedded in everyday work with patients. Boards are looking at the actual applications that come in, analysing the details and assessing them for fitness. Boards seek methodologists, who are engaged more in academic research. So, panels operate earlier in the process than boards do.