Our Future Health, the UK’s largest health research programme, is opening clinics across Northern Ireland from today, 18 November, giving people the chance to help transform the future of disease prevention and treatment.
The first Northern Irish clinics will be at Boots stores in Belfast and Lisburn from with Derry/Londonderry later this month. Our Future Health plans to expand to 25-30 locations from mid-2026, offering up to 40,000 appointment slots for volunteers across Northern Ireland.
Professor Joann Rhodes, Chief Executive of Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland (HIRANI), said: “By participating in this groundbreaking programme, people across Northern Ireland can contribute to vital population health research that will provide data to uncover new patterns of disease and treatment pathways relevant for our region. This isn’t just about collecting data – it’s about empowering our community to drive the health discoveries that will benefit generations to come.
“We’re proud to support a programme that puts Northern Ireland at the forefront of precision medicine and gives every participant a meaningful role in transforming how we prevent, detect and treat disease.”
Each year, around 6,500 people in Northern Ireland die prematurely due to preventable ill-health*. As well as the years of life lost, these diseases inflict significant illness and pain in people’s lives. Promoting a shift towards disease prevention and tackling health inequalities are essential in Northern Irish health policy as well as Our Future Health’s mission, to help everyone live longer, healthier lives.
Our Future Health aims to transform the prevention, detection and treatment of conditions such as dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and stroke. With up to five million volunteers right across the UK, the goal is to create one of the most detailed pictures ever of people’s health.
Our Future Health will be posting invitation letters to people who live near the new clinics. However, volunteers don’t need an invitation to take part. Anyone over the age of 18 years old can join by signing up online at ourfuturehealth.org.uk, completing an online health questionnaire, and booking a short clinic appointment. Many people across Northern Ireland have previously registered and can now attend an appointment.
At their clinic appointment, as well as having a blood sample and some physical measurements taken, volunteers will be offered information about their own health, including their blood pressure. In the future, volunteers will also be given the option to receive feedback about their risk of some diseases and have the opportunity to take part in cutting-edge research studies.
Even if volunteers don’t live near one of the new clinics, they can still sign up and complete a questionnaire while they wait for a suitable clinic location. The information from the health questionnaire provides valuable information for researchers studying new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases.
Our Future Health clinic locations can be viewed on an interactive map here.
Joseph Carter, Head of Asthma + Lung UK Northern Ireland, said: “As a founding charity member of Our Future Health, the UK’s largest research programme, we welcome the news that clinics are now opening in Northern Ireland. This comes after a successful launch in England, Wales and Scotland.
“This opportunity to use health data for research will help us to better understand lung disease, ultimately leading to better diagnosis, treatment and management.
“By working together, we want to see the thousands of people with lung conditions living in Northern Ireland to be better represented in health research. In the past two decades there has been little improvement in how we diagnose and treat lung conditions, despite the fact they are the third biggest cause of death.”
Professor Ian S. Young, Chief Scientific Advisor, Director of Research for Health and Social Care, Northern Ireland, said: “We are delighted to welcome the Our Future Health programme to Northern Ireland. This programme has the potential to improve healthcare in Northern Ireland by supporting early detection and prevention and consequently improving health outcomes for our population.”
Dr Raghib Ali, Chief Executive and Chief Medical Officer of Our Future Health, said: “Our Future Health is designed to help everyone in the UK live longer, healthier lives, so we’re delighted to be launching appointments in Northern Ireland. This launch represents an exciting achievement – Our Future Health is the first large-scale prospective study to recruit volunteers in all four nations of the UK. We will be inviting people across Northern Ireland to join our programme, which will give them the chance to learn more about their own health and contribute to research that will help improve the health of people in Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK.”
Our Future Health is an ambitious collaboration between the public sector, life sciences companies and leading UK health charities including: Action Against Age-related Macular Degeneration, Action for ME, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Asthma + Lung UK, Blood Cancer UK, Brain Tumour Research, Breast Cancer Now, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, DEBRA, Diabetes UK, Fight for Sight, Glaucoma UK, Kidney Research UK, LifeArc, Macular Society, MQ, Pancreatic Cancer UK, Parkinson’s UK, Prostate Cancer Research, Prostate Cancer UK, Rosetrees, Royal Osteoporosis Society, Stroke Association, Versus Arthritis, Wellcome and World Cancer Research Fund. Our Future Health was set up with funding from the UKRI Accelerating Detection of Disease Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK.
