NEWS: PM Plans to Improve Medical Research in UK

As reported by Gov.uk the Prime Minister has announced action to accelerate the discovery of life-saving drugs, improve patient care and make Britain the best place in the world for medical research

The government and the Wellcome Trust will invest up to £600 million to create a new health data research service. This will transform the access to NHS data by providing a secure single access point to national-scale data sets, slashing red tape for researchers.

Clinical trials will also be fast-tracked to accelerate the development of the medicines and therapies of the future, with the current time it takes to get a clinical trial set up cut to 150 days by March 2026 – where latest data collected in 2022 was over 250 days.

Through this new drive, patients will have improved access to new treatments and technologies. We already saw the power of health data during the pandemic, and this will allow the NHS to make huge strides in patient care.

Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said: “The new era of global insecurity requires a government that steps up, not stands aside. That is why we are going further and faster in reshaping our economy and delivering our Plan for Change. Life sciences, like our brilliant car industry, is a great British success story. The measures I am announcing today will turbo-charge medical research and deliver better patient care. I am determined to make Britain the best place in the world to invest in medical research.”

The Health Data Research Service brings access to data for medical research into one secure and easy-to-use location, meaning a researcher doesn’t have to navigate different systems or make multiple applications for information for the same project.

This improvement – which will begin from the end of 2026 – will speed up the process and could set the UK on a path to cure cancer, dementia and arthritis quicker, which will improve patient outcomes and help turbocharge the economy.

It follows the recent decision to scrap NHS England to do away with unnecessary bureaucracy and make government work better for people, patients and the economy.

The new service will be housed at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridgeshire, where Wellcome is building a range of new R&D laboratory and office spaces to expand the current campus’s capacity for innovative genomics and biodata companies.