The recent UK Department of Health publication “Taking Healthcare to the Patient: Transforming NHS Ambulance Services”1 recommended that the Department of Health should commission a programme of work to build the evidence base for the delivery of emergency and unscheduled prehospital care. As a starting point, the Department of Health commissioned the 999 EMS Research Forum to review the evidence base for the delivery of emergency prehospital care; to identify gaps in the evidence base; and to prioritise topics for future research.

The 999 EMS Research Forum is a partnership of academics, clinicians and prehospital care practitioners and managers formed in 1999, whose aim is to encourage, promote and disseminate research and evidence-based policy and practice in 999 health care.

Prioritisation of research topics is a key part of the process of commissioning of research, although methods may differ.2 3 The desirability of including a wide range of stakeholders in a structured approach has been stressed, in order to achieve a credible result that may be more likely to produce research that informs policy and practice.4^–6 This emergency prehospital care research prioritisation exercise included …