University College London and four trusts in the capital are founding Europe's largest academic health science partnership.

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital foundation trust, the Royal Free Hampstead trust and University College London Hospitals foundation trust will form UCL Partners.

It aims to improve the quality of care in its trusts and share advances nationally and worldwide.

Project director Neil Goodwin said the partnership would speed up the application of research outcomes by integrating researchers, training and clinicians.

"The scale of the operation is important," said Mr Goodwin. "To compete internationally we have to be sufficiently big."

No merger

The organisations would continue to strengthen their ties, he said, but the project was "not about organisational change or merger".

Mr Goodwin said the project had been given context by the next stage review, which called for the creation of several academic health science centres.

Meanwhile, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre trust has announced it is hoping to form an academic health science centre with Oxford University. The trust says it has been "challenged" by the tariff system, which does not reflect the cost of its specialist work. It is keen to avoid a merger with other bodies, one option considered by NHS South Central.

Imperial College Healthcare trust was formed as the UK's first academic health science centre in October last year.

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