VICTOR: Making Visible the Impact of Research
By Dr Natalie Jones
The benefits of delivering and participating in research are well known, but too often, the unintended and less easily measured impacts remain hidden. VICTOR (Making Visible the ImpaCT Of Research), developed by NHS organisations across Yorkshire and Humber, is a tool designed specifically to address this gap. It helps researchers and organisations capture and showcase the broader value of research in a way that is meaningful, accessible, and actionable.
Understanding and communicating the impact of my own research has always been central to my practice. In 2023, I was honoured to receive the NHS England Chief Allied Health Professions Officer's Award for Research Impact, a moment that strengthened my commitment to helping others amplify the reach and visibility of their work.
Researchers are increasingly required to evidence impact, yet uncertainty still surrounds how to demonstrate it effectively. This is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in the power of VICTOR. It provides a structured, credible, and adaptable framework for capturing real-world impacts tailored to the needs of different audiences.
“VICTOR has enabled me to gather meaningful impact data from a wide range of stakeholders. Some of the stories shared were incredibly powerful, revealing improvements to clinical practice that I would never have known about otherwise.”
Clinical Academic Researcher
The Origins of VICTOR
The VICTOR story began in 2017–18 during a secondment to the NIHR, where a colleague and I led the co-design of a research impact tool intended to surface significant — and often overlooked — impacts within the NHS, especially those affecting services and patient care.
Working with twelve NHS organisations across Yorkshire and Humber, we co-created a pilot tool that highlights the “unintended” impacts of clinical research: the softer outcomes, ripple effects, and bi-products that frequently shape cultures, teams, services, and experiences.
You can read more about the origins of VICTOR and the development work behind it here: 👉🖱️
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37798616/
This work, and my recognition of the increasing need for clear articulation of research impacts related to services, patient care, and workforce development, inspired me to write a call-to-action editorial for allied health professionals.
Read the editorial here: 👉🖱️
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308022620988473
Since 2018, the original VICTOR tool has been freely available for download and has been accessed hundreds of times: 👉🖱️
https://arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk/research/projects/victor-making-visible-the-impact-of-research/
How Researchers Are Using VICTOR
Researchers have used VICTOR to explore impacts ranging from NIHR portfolio-adopted studies to funded career development awards.
For example, Forero and Palmer (2021) used VICTOR to evaluate the NIHR-funded Big Cactus study, capturing impacts such as:
Health benefits for patients
Service and workforce improvements
Enhanced visibility and credibility for the organisations involved
Increased research awareness and confidence among clinical teams
A growing sense that research was becoming “business as usual”
Read their work here: 👉🖱️
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1460-6984.12814
Although initially designed for clinical research, VICTOR has proven incredibly versatile. It has even been used to evaluate research capacity-building initiatives such as AHP and nursing internship programmes.
Read more here: 👉🖱️
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37795565/
The Evolution to e-VICTOR
In 2021–22, additional NIHR funding enabled the creation of a fully electronic version, VICTOR Version 2. Following extensive prototyping with stakeholders across Yorkshire and Humber, a complete and implementable digital platform was launched in 2023.
Today, the new e-VICTOR platform is being rolled out across the region. In the last two months alone, more than 50 new users have registered, many of whom have already created impact visual summaries for:
Academic publications
Trust board presentations
Senior leadership briefings
Quality reporting
CQC inspections
Seeing e-VICTOR come to life — and watching researchers use it to illuminate the real-world value of their studies — has been incredibly rewarding. My own experiences using VICTOR have shown me just how powerful it can be in helping teams clearly demonstrate the added value that research brings.
Find Out More
If you’d like to explore VICTOR or e-VICTOR further, here are some useful links:
Origins of VICTOR (NIHR blog):
https://prod.drupal.rdn.nihr.ac.uk/blog/a-victor-y-for-measuring-research-impact-in-the-nhs/12081Download the paper version of VICTOR (PDF):
https://hseresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/VICTOR-pack.pdfVICTOR project information
Search “VICTOR Making visible the impacts of research” on Powtoon for an accessible overview
For more information about e-VICTOR, please contact:
Dr Natalie Jones, VICTOR Implementation Lead, NIHR CRN Yorkshire Humber
📧 natalie.jones56@nhs.net
🐦 @natlouj
