Re:Shuffle – Dr Zubir Ahmed, MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care
Researcher
Dear Zubir,
My warmest congratulations on your appointment as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care. I am excited to see the impact you will have in your new Life Sciences brief.
The UK is a global life sciences superpower, with a world-class research base, longstanding academic excellence, and an unparalleled data environment. Yet global competition for R&D and manufacturing investment is fierce, and the UK has been experiencing setbacks in its ability to attract foreign investment. Just this week Merck & Co pulled out of its £1 billion investment plans for a London research hub. This is indicative of a trend – the UK’s life sciences foreign direct investment ranked second among comparator countries in 2017, but fell to seventh by 2023.
The life sciences sector is one of our greatest national assets, and is crucial for the success of the health system, acting as a partner for innovation. The Life Sciences Sector Plan is clear both about the challenges and opportunities facing the sector, with the goal of making the UK “the most attractive place in the world to develop and deploy new treatments and technologies”. This bold ambition would be transformational for both the UK’s health system and economy.
With this aim in mind, here are three priorities for you to consider in your new role:
- Make the NHS an easier market to enter
The UK’s life sciences sector excels at discovery, but struggles with commercialisation and adoption, as acknowledged in the Life Sciences Sector Plan. How difficult it is to enter the NHS market is a key cause of this. Countless businesses, especially start-ups, are forced to look abroad in order to secure the viability of their organisation. Transforming this reality should be a priority in your new role.
A key step to this end should be introducing a single point of entry for innovation in the NHS. Currently, businesses must go from trust to trust or hospital to hospital, negotiating with each one individually to try and secure pilots or adoption. This inefficiency hurts both the life sciences sector and the health system itself.
- Transform how successful innovative pilots are scaled
Despite the challenges, successful innovation is frequently seen across the NHS – from liquid biopsies which can detect cancer far earlier than tissue biopsies and are less invasive, to wearable remote monitoring technology used to facilitate virtual wards and better long-term condition management. Yet too often, these successful innovations struggle to be scaled across the NHS, with a stifling effect on the life sciences sector.
Prioritisation of organisational autonomy in hospitals, trusts and ICSs is a key part of this. Similarly, NHS organisations are sometimes reluctant to share their data relating to an innovation they are piloting or using with the businesses supplying the innovation. This makes it very difficult for these businesses to prove the return on investment of their intervention.
Recognising these problems, the Life Sciences Sector Plan promises to introduce an Innovator Passport for MedTech by 2026. In your new role, you should prioritise maximising the positive impact of Innovator Passports, including extending their scope to cover more than just MedTech.
- Ensure evaluation frameworks capture preventative benefits
Current NHS evaluation frameworks, including NICE’s appraisal model, are often unable to capture the tangible benefits of interventions with a preventative impact. Whether preventing a health issue arising in the first place or reducing decline, evaluation frameworks struggle to quantify the benefits of reduced hospital admissions, reduced healthcare usage, reduced absences from work, improved patient quality of life and more.
In order to ensure the innovations and treatments the UK’s life sciences sector is producing are utilised in this country and throughout the NHS, it is vital evaluation frameworks are adapted.
Now is a critical juncture for the future of the life sciences and the NHS in the UK. In this context, and with the Government’s strategic direction laid out in various plans, your new role has never been more crucial. I wish you every success.
Sincerely,
Alice Semark
Researcher, Re:State