Professor Niro Siriwardena was a keynote speaker at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s (LPFT) Research and Innovation Conference which took place at Branston Hall on 8 March 2018. The conference was chaired by Dr Sue Elcock, medical director at LPFT. The event, which was attended by over 100 delegates, included keynote talks from Chris Roberts, Alzheimer’s Society Ambassador, Professor Belinda Lennox of the University of Oxford and Dr Joanna Moncrieff of University College London.

Chris Roberts, who himself has dementia and his wife, Jayne Goodrick spoke on ‘Join dementia research ‘handing out hope’ and the importance of those with the condition and their families engaging with studies into the condition as a means of providing possibilities for future treatment and care. Professor Cox spoke on her ground-breaking work on psychosis and immunity on ‘Could psychosis be a treatable immune disorder?’ This was followed by workshops on ‘How to make a first step into a clinical academic career’, ‘Taking a stab at research’, ‘How research improved practice’ and ‘Falls prevention in care homes’.

After lunch there followed LPFT’s innovation bid winners and how they had developed their ideas. Another example of ‘How to develop your ideas into research’ and the importance of collaboration between the NHS and the University of Lincoln was presented by Dr Amulya Nadkarni (consultant in child and adolescent mental health), Sophie Keogh (undertaking a research secondment at the Lincoln Institute for Health), Prof Siriwardena of CaHRU. They discussed how the collaboration began, how the ideas for research emerged, progress on current work on a systematic review of ‘Effects of non-pharmacological interventions for insomnia in children with Autistic Spectrum Condition, and how this was planned to lead to future work.

The final talk was from Dr Moncrieff on ‘Get involved – research into reducing or stopping antipsychotic medication’, how drugs could we withdrawn in some patients on these drugs and the programme of research which included a randomised controlled trial of antipsychotic withdrawal.

By Prof Niro Siriwardena