M-RIC Review of 2024
Our year in numbers

60

People involved as public members

M-RIC is actively committed to working side-by-side with the community we serve. We now have 10 service user and carer representatives appointed to work side-by-side with our researchers and over 50 public advisors.

Girl with blue hair using smartphone

1,143

Fans and followers on social media

Other M-RIC social media (X, LinkedIn and Facebook) key statistics:

388 posts published
4,000 video views
198 mentions on X
51,000 people reached
119,000 page impressions

Prof Ben Barr

£10.4M

Research grants awarded and applied for

Funding received from National Institute for Health and Research and the Office for Life Sciences to establish M-RIC.

This was primarily for what is termed ‘infrastructure’ funding. This means recruiting the staff and creating the facilities needed to establish a research centre like ours. This means our researchers are regularly applying for grant income to deliver specific studies and trials and over the last year we have attracted £10.4 million.

£1.78M

Infrastructure funding

We have identified further funding opportunities to boost our staffing and service provision.

We have attracted £1.28M over three years to set up and deliver a multi-disciplinary Mood Disorder Clinic. Once established, it will involve multi-disciplinary health professionals taking new approaches to treating people for whom previous treatments (medicines or psychological therapies) have not been successful. We have also attracted a further £500, 250 from National Institute for Health and Care Research’s capacity and capability fund to recruit more research nurses and data scientists.

5.2k

Users on the M-RIC website

We have published over 20 news stories to our website over the past year.

M-RIC researchers presenting at the CHIL Launch event in December 2023.

20

Industry and third party contracting

We have established strong collaborative relationships with companies keen to work in partnership with us and have structure of contracts in place including 15 non-disclosure agreements and five full partnership and collaboration agreements.

The Lighthouse Choir

9

Grass roots organisations

We have worked with a range of community organisations including:

Mary Seacole House
Savera UK
Sefton CVS
Sefton in Mind
Black Womens Health Forum
Systa-Maps
The David Project
The African Caribbean Centre

40 plus

PPIE workshops, meetings and events

Our patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) activity has involved:

Public advisor workshops
TrainingGovernance
Research meetings
Public engagement – Creative PPIE workshops and activities

Prof Dan Joyce at the Mood Disorders consultation event

6

Work packages making progress

In 2024, our six research areas which we call work packages have made meaningful progress, with new insights, innovative methodologies, and increased collaboration driving meaningful progress. They include:

M-RIC access to data
Mental health avatar
Mood disorder care innovations
Child and adolescent digital mental health
Neuroimmune therapeutics for psychosis
Population mental health

Photo of Liverpool Science Park

34

Members of staff

M-RIC is made up of a multidisciplinary team of expertise. As of October 2024, we have 19 research staff and 15 operational staff working in support functions.