Announcing the ‘6th National QUOD Symposium’.

We are excited to announce that the annual QUOD Symposium is back and will be held on Wednesday 9th November 2022 at Jesmond Dene House in-person, in Newcastle.

We look forward to having the opportunity to meet with the extended QUOD family based at regional centres and donor hospitals across the UK, as well as with researchers from academia and industry, and our NHSBT colleagues. Please see below for our save the date poster and latest programme.

If you are interested in joining us, please RSVP to quod-research@nds.ox.ac.uk

QUOD named UK Biobank of the Year 2022!

The UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre awarded QUOD first place in the UK Biobank of the Year.

The UK Biobanking Showcase is the UK’s leading event for those who work in biobanking and human tissue research and took place online over three days with interesting talks and presentations from biobanks all over the UK.

Please see below some extracts from the Judging Panel’s comments: 

‘… the Biobank provides a highly specialist resource which is of immense value to the organ donation field.  Despite being so specialised, … QUOD nevertheless responded flexibly during the pandemic to participate in the RECOVERY trial and in the development of the NHSBT Oxford COVID BioArchive (COBA).  …  The panel particularly commended the quality and range of the Biobank’s outreach and engagement activities which unusually included providing work experience to college students during the pandemic.’

Professor Ploeg, Director of QUOD (Quality in Organ Donation) and Dr Sarah Cross National Operational Coordinator of QUOD are delighted with this wonderful achievement: ‘This award is an important milestone in our pursuit to increase research in donation and transplantation, increasing organ utilisation and providing more and better organs for our patients’. They congratulate the whole QUOD team including the Specialist Nurses in Organ Donation and NORS teams based in the 61 NHS partner trusts across the UK, as well as the core team in Oxford, the Directors of NHS Blood and Transplant, the Medical Research Council and our academic collaborators without whom none of this would have been possible.