Super-trust will offer quicker cures

Patients in London will be the first in the world to receive breakthrough treatments under a major hospital merger taking place today.

Two top hospitals are joining a leading university to create Britain's answer to Harvard or Johns Hopkins in the US.

Doctors will work with academics at the cutting edge of medicine, with the aim of reducing the time lapse between medical discoveries and patient care. Currently patients can wait 10 years before seeing the benefits of breakthrough research.

The super-trust combines Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary's NHS Trust in Paddington. Renamed the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, it will be the biggest trust in the NHS, treating onemillion patients a year with a £765 million turnover.

Doctors at the new centre will be encouraged to do more research and scientists will have better access to patients to test treatments.

Trust chiefs hope to "lead the world in improving human health", with more people invited to take part in clinical trials.

Professor Stephen Smith, chief executive of the trust and former head of medicine at Imperial, said: "Our aim is to be the UK's Johns Hopkins and to research the newest treatment to give to Londoners first.

"The UK has an outstanding record on research but when it comes to translating that into benefits to patients it has been less good. This means the very cutting-edge drugs and processes will be available."

Professor John Warner, head of paediatrics at Imperial and a doctor at St Mary's, insisted there would not be a conflict between trying to care for patients, meet NHS targets and push the boundaries of medicine.

"Research is going to be scrutinised at every level and patients are inevitably going to benefit because people involved in clinical trials get real red-carpet treatment," he said.

The intense focus on research will aim to avoid disasters such as the drug trial at Northwick Park Hospital that left six men fighting for their lives in March last year.