Research Priorities

Insight & Innovation

UKADs revitalised strategy, “Strategic Refresh: Athlete First” updates and extends the pre-existing strategy into 2026, with a renewed emphasis on putting the athlete first and foremost in our minds when delivering our mission to protect clean sport. ​

One of our key objectives is to “Leverage research and analytics to enhance our insight on the threats to clean sport”, speaks directly to the work of the Insight and Innovation Team, who are responsible for co-ordinating engagement with research and data analytics to identify ways of enhancing our operations.

Contact the Team

Our Insight & Innovation team can be contacted via email at insight@ukad.org.uk.

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Our Objectives

Research
Co-ordinate the development of our Research and Innovation Agenda
Partners
Seek out opportunities to embed technology or approaches from other sectors to enhance our operations
World
Improve engagement with UK and International Research Institutions
Stats
Commission research studies, pilot projects and support research proposals submitted to funding bodies
Research Priorities & Agenda

Prevalence

Prevalence studies are difficult to undertake due to the inherent difficulties of obtaining accurate and reliable data.

We will seek innovative ways of assessing prevalence of doping in sports in the UK, by sport and by level of athlete.

This will enable us to benchmark our efforts in the pursuit of clean sport.

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Drug Detection

To enhance our drug detection for prohibited substances and methods we will carry out more research in the following areas:

Dried Blood Sampling

  • Detecting anabolic androgenic steroids from dried blood sampling 
  • Detecting steroid esters from dried blood sampling 
  • Expanding on the analysis menu in order to validate detection methods towards other prohibited substances and methods 

Blood Doping

  • Detecting autologous blood transfusion 
  • Developing indirect methods for detecting blood doping

Improving existing analytical methods

  • Growth hormone biomarkers
  • Growth hormone releasing factors 
  • Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents
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Monitoring & Evaluation

To enhance our anti-doping education and operations at UKAD we seek to answer the following research questions:

Education

  • How can we measure the effectiveness of our education interventions? 
  • How effective are our education programmes towards reducing unintentional and/or intentional doping? 
  • What are the most effective methods for educating athlete support personnel?  

Testing

  • How effective is our testing strategy at deterring athletes from doping?

Results Management

  • Can we measure the impact of our sample storage and reanalysis programme on deterring athletes from doping? 

Intelligence & Investigations

  • Are there alternative methods towards gathering information on suspected doping activity?
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Data Analytics

Using data to inform our policies and processes, we seek to answer:

  • What can our existing data can tell us?
  • Does Artificial Intelligence have a role in supporting anti-doping activities?
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Our Research Projects

Visit our research projects page to find out more about the recent work we have done and how to get involved in future research projects.

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Research Projects
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