About us

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the busiest and largest teaching NHS foundation trusts in the country, with around 16,000 staff and an annual income of £1billion.

We have a strong history of providing high quality care, clinical excellence, and innovation in medical research regionally, nationally and internationally.

We’re also proud to be the second largest provider of specialised services in the country, supporting people with a range of rare and complex medical, surgical and neurological conditions, cancers and genetic orders.

Our staff oversee around 1.84m patient ‘contacts’ each year, delivering high standards of healthcare from the following sites:

These include a range of flagship services which deliver cutting-edge care (supported by state-of-the-art diagnostic services in both radiology and pathology) and are a catalyst for innovation to support pioneering clinical practice in the NHS.

Pioneering treatments

The Trust is at the forefront of pioneering treatments such as transplantation, mitochondrial donation at the Newcastle Fertility Centre – a form of IVF in which the future baby’s mitochondrial DNA comes from a donor egg to avoid passing on inherited diseases – and PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis, a drug to prevent HIV).

Our patients, both children and adults, will be amongst the first in the world to receive CAR-T cell therapy which marks a new era of personalised medicine for treating lymphoma and leukaemia.

Leaders in research and development

We are leaders in healthcare research and development across a wide range of specialisms delivering benefits not only for today’s patients but for generations to come. Our partnership working with Newcastle University focuses on key areas which are important to all our futures including stem cell research, genetics, ageing and vitality.

Much of our work is underpinned by a world-class programme of research and innovation for which we have an enviable reputation. This has been strengthened through our partnerships with the:

National Institute for Health Research
North East and North Cumbria Academic Health Science Network
Northern Health Science Alliance
Newcastle Health Innovation Partners– a collaboration between the Trust, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University which focuses on improving the health and opportunities for people living in Newcastle and the surrounding area.

We are also proud of our new and existing partnerships with local people, patients, neighbouring NHS organisations, universities, local authority and charitable bodies.

Diagnostic innovators

Newcastle Hospitals is one of 11 NIHR Medtech and Invitro Diagnostics Co-operatives (MICs), leading to the launch of ‘Diagnostics North East’ – an overarching structure bringing together all the components of a unique and innovative diagnostics infrastructure to aid diagnostic development for industry and academia.

The NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing & Long-Conditions was also recently renewed and continues to provide infrastructure for the considerable volume of high quality, leading edge research in ageing and long-term conditions.

The parallel brand to Diagnostics North East, known as Therapeutics North East, also received a £7million grant for a National Advanced Treatment Centres for Cellular Therapie s, a project being delivered in partnership with centres in Scotland.

National exemplars

In 2017 we were proud to be awarded Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) status based upon our past investment and adoption of technology as part of our drive to continually improve quality of care and patient safety. In 2022 we were officially accredited as a Global Digital Exemplar for fulfilling its commitments as part of the GDE programme with NHS England.

The Trust is also accredited to HIMSS Stage 6, the global standard for digital maturity, across all its sites, making us one of only eight NHS organisations to have achieved stage six or seven.