UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer has announced action to accelerate the discovery of life-saving drugs, improve patient care and advance UK medical research.
The government and the Wellcome Trust will invest up to £600 million to create a new Health Data Research Service.
This aims to 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.
This will be achieved by cutting bureaucracy and standardising contracts so time isn’t wasted on negotiating separate details across different NHS organisations, and ensuring transparency by publishing trust level data for the first time.
Through this new drive, patients will have improved access to new treatments and technologies.
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.
That is not just good for patients and their families. It means growth that puts more money in working people’s pockets with more, better paid jobs.”
Patient confidentiality will continue to be held to a gold standard with these changes – with rigorous security measures being in place, like anonymity and virtual locked rooms, to ensure no one’s health data is compromised.
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 improve the economy.
