Starmer pledges to slash time needed to set up clinical trials to 150 days
The Prime Minister also announced new investment of ‘up to £600 million’ into Britain’s life sciences industry.
Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to slash the number of days it takes to set up a clinical trial from “over 250” to 150, in a bid to strengthen the UK’s medical sciences industry.
The Prime Minister also announced new investment of “up to £600 million” by both the Government and the Wellcome Trust, a health research charity, in a new health data research service.
Sir Keir’s announcement came as he eased targets on some electric vehicles and after Donald Trump’s tariffs began hitting the car UK industry.
Britain’s life sciences sector is a “shining example of British brilliance, absolutely pivotal part of our export economy”, Sir Keir said as he visited Jaguar Land Rover’s West Midlands plant.
The Prime Minister said: “We’re going to rip up the red tape, cut the stifling bureaucracy that slows down clinical trials. Now, Britain used to be so much better than this, but we’ve taken our foot off the pedal.”
Plans to standardise the contracts used to set up clinical trials are among the steps the Government will take, which it says will eliminate the need to negotiate a new agreement each time a trial is begun.
In a bid to improve transparency across the NHS, trust-level data on clinical trials will be published for the first time.
Sir Keir said: “The latest data says it takes over 250 days to set up a clinical trial, but I’m going to slash that to 150, and on top of that, I can announce a new investment: up to £600 million in new health data research service, a welcome partnership with Wellcome Trust, strengthen the genome cluster in Cambridge, making sure that patient data in our NHS is unlocked for the public good, an opportunity for growth, but more importantly, to save lives with cutting-edge medicine – and Britain is so good for this.”
He added: “We saw that in the pandemic and now we need to pick up the pace again; this country has never waited around for history to shape us. We’ve shaped history, and we will do so again.”
The new health data research service announced by Sir Keir will be based at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridgeshire.
It will bring together access to different medical research data in one secure location, allowing researchers to study it without having to make several applications.
The Government believes this could speed up research into diseases such as cancer, dementia and arthritis, but insists patient confidentiality will continue to be held to a gold standard of security.
John-Arne Rottingen, chief executive of Wellcome, said: “There is so much more we could learn from health data in this country by joining it up better.
“The new service will give researchers a way to easily harness the data held across different parts of the NHS.
“The simpler it is to analyse data or identify patients to join clinical trials, the more quickly we can improve our understanding of illness and develop new treatments.
“Providing a single, secure service for approved researchers will take away the significant overhead associated with locating, accessing and comparing disparate datasets.
“It will create opportunities for patients to access new treatments through trials that would otherwise have been hard to arrange or conduct.”
The announcement was welcomed by medical research charities, with Cancer Research UK describing it as a “much-needed investment from the Government”.
The charity’s executive director of policy, Dr Ian Walker, added: “The information held within NHS data could help to improve our understanding of diseases like cancer and contribute to the creation of effective new treatments.
“Despite its huge potential, access to this data has long been a significant challenge for the research sector, and anything that unleashes the power of NHS data, whilst protecting the security and anonymity of patients, will help enormously.
“The UK can lead the world in data science for the benefits of patients both at home and abroad. It will be essential to consult with patients every step of the way.”
Kieran Winterburn, Alzheimer’s Society’s head of national influencing, said: “Dementia is the UK’s biggest killer. Research will beat dementia, but we need to make it a reality sooner – through more funding, more partnership-working, better access to data and more people taking part in dementia research.
“That’s why Alzheimer’s Society welcomes the Prime Minister’s announcement today that red tape will be slashed for researchers, with a new secure, single access point to NHS data.
“Dementia researchers can face gridlock with a lengthy and complex process to access NHS data, navigating through various systems to gather the information they need for vital population and clinical studies.”
