Oxford Pain Network - History

Research into pain at Oxford dates back over 50 years. In 1970, John Lloyd, one of the founder members of what is now the British Pain Society, established one of the first dedicated pain management services in the UK (the ‘Oxford Pain Relief Unit’), establishing a multidisciplinary team of consultants to address all aspects of chronic pain. Together with Henry McQuay they supported a developing program of research into clinical pain mechanisms and management.

In 1997, Irene Tracey started a new pain research group with a focus on fundamental mechanisms of pain processing in the brain and spinal cord, using brain imaging, and was instrumental in establishing a growing community of basic and clinical pain science. In recent years, this community has grown to over 20 research labs across different departments at the university.

In 2007 the OxPain collaboration was formed to bring together all pain-interested clinicians and researchers in Oxford. Meetings are held twice a year and provide an opportunity to discuss clinical services or present research, facilitating cross-fertilisation of ideas and providing a platform for study recruitment and translational research.

In 2022, pain became one of the core themes of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre Pain – NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, funded by the NIHR. This identified several core domains of expertise that bring together multiple researchers within the pain network. This includes cognitive mechanisms, sleep, neurotechnology, opioid de-prescribing, and big data. The BRC supports part of the core infrastructure that enables the Oxford Pain Network, and provides critical links with our research themes, PPI, EDI, statistics, and health economics.