UK Multiple Long-Term Conditions Trials Collaborative (UK MTC) Team

A single patient with multiple long-term conditions—such as diabetes, heart disease, and depression—is typically excluded from clinical trials, leaving doctors with no reliable evidence on which treatments work best for them. The problem is that most clinical trials study one disease at a time, so people with multimorbidity are routinely left out. This means the drugs and therapies they receive are based on data from healthier, simpler patients. The UK Multiple Long-Term Conditions Trials Collaborative aims to fix this by pooling raw, individual-level data from many past trials—a technique called Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis (IPDMA). This gives researchers enough statistical power to ask questions that single trials cannot answer: how do different combinations of conditions, frailty, ethnicity, or deprivation affect treatment outcomes? If successful, this work could reshape how the NHS designs and personalises care for the growing number of people living with multiple conditions. Instead of one-size-fits-all guidelines, clinicians might tailor treatments based on a patient’s specific cluster of illnesses and social circumstances. The project is building the network, skills, and data infrastructure to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of launching transformative trials that directly improve patient care.