PIONEERING research into how people with blood diseases are cared for has been launched in York - after a patient left a legacy of £200,000.

The three-year research project, undertaken by doctors at York Hospital and the University of York, got off the ground last week.

It has been funded with a legacy of £200,000 left by a leukaemia patient who was cared for at York hospital.

Doctors will be looking at patients with blood disorders like leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma - a malignant bone marrow disease - conditions with which about 1,800 people a year are diagnosed in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Researchers want to find out about the "palliative" care given to these patients - care that does not cure them, but which relieves symptoms and improves quality of life.

The majority of existing research into cancer and other diseases has centred around finding a cure - not much has been done into palliative care for patients while they are ill.

Dr Martin Howard, a consultant haematologist at York Hospital, who is involved with the research project, said: "It's about providing better quality treatments for patients to ensure that they have the best quality of life.

"Previous studies have been done on a very small number of patients. This will be a much larger study over a large period of time, we're going to end up providing something that's unique."

Fellow researcher Dr Pat Ansell, a senior lecturer in the department of health sciences at the University of York, said: "It's something that's not been done anywhere else, which is very exciting."

Doctors want to gather evidence from up to 500 patients in York for each year of the project, gathering records and questioning willing volunteers and their relatives.

They want to find out about the whole range of care given to blood disease patients, from what medicines they are given to the support and information they receive.

That will feed into a study into how different medical services should be working together to best meet the needs of patients.

Smaller projects are also planned to investigate specific aspects or nursing and medical care for patients at York Hospital.

Caroline Mozley, head of research and development for the North Yorkshire NHS Research and Development Alliance, said: "This hospital was a district general hospital. With the coming of the medical school it's become a teaching hospital. It's changed its character and research activity is growing, but we haven't had a history in the past of research going on here. "It was very important we didn't waste this money. We do have ways of making sure we spent money like this wisely."