At Southmead Hospital in Bristol, Dr Rice contributes to the clinical service for people living with mutliple sclerosis (MS) and leads a tertiary/quarternary service for people with neuroinflammatory disorders.

Together with Dr Tarunya Arun in Coventry/Warwick, Claire is a founding member of the NHS England Rare Disease Collaborative Network in Neurosarcoidosis and is collaborating on the NEUROSarc-UK study: A UK rare disease multicentre collaborative network study to investigate neurosarcoidosis phenotypes, determinants, and treatment outcomes. Together with other collaborators, she has proposed diagnostic criteria and contributed to recently-published, international treatment guidelines for primary angiitis of the central nervous system. 

Dr Rice's basic research interest has focussed on the role of the bone marrow in inflammatory mediated immune disease, particularly multiple sclerosis (MS) and Friedreich’s ataxia (FA). This work has led directly to 3 completed 'bench-to-bedside' investigator-led clinical trials of bone marrow-derived cell therapy in MS. She has also successfully contributed to a completed pilot trial of G-CSF in FA. This work has contributed to renewed interest in the potential of the bone marrow as a target for disease modifying therapy in immune-mediated and neurodegenerative disease. Recently, she has worked to establish a new programme of laboratory-based research focusing on the potential of cell-free DNA as a diagnostic biomarker for rarer neuroinflammatory diseases, including neurosarcoidosis and neurovasculitis.