Life Sciences Vision

The Life Sciences Vision, published 6 July 2021, set out the Government’s plan for ‘building back better’ for the Life Sciences industry following the pandemic, focussing on “building genuine trust between the NHS and the sector about what can be achieved by working closely together”.

This Vision follows the 2017 Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, calling out the need to focus on early intervention, predictive and monitoring technologies, and genomics and data, in line with commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan. It notes that in order to deliver such change, new technologies will need to be tested rapidly and adopted widely across the NHS, with rich data made available to innovators in order to accelerate the transition to population health management, as set out in the Integration and Innovation White Paper.

Several commitments highlighted in the Vision point towards an exciting future for the UK’s digital health technology industry, including pledges to harness the UK’s valuable genomic and health data, support the NHS to purchase and embed innovative technologies more effectively, and to spread these innovations as widely as possible. It looks to ensure the UK’s business environment is an agile one in which services with the potential to improve the quality and speed of health and care can commercialise their products in the most productive way possible.

The Vision also sets out seven ‘missions’, each of which will have a single empowered decision maker who can mobilise private and public sector to help solve the biggest healthcare problems. These include issues such as reducing mortality from respiratory diseases and addressing the underlying biology of ageing.

“Preconditions for Success”

On top of this, the Life Sciences Vision outlines four essential preconditions for success. For the digital health technology industry, the most crucial of these is ensuring that the NHS continues to improve as an innovation partner, carrying forward the ability to trial, embrace and deliver innovation at speed and at scale. The Vision emphasises that using the momentum created during the pandemic, during which the NHS was able to approve and roll out innovative health technologies at pace, is key.

Another precondition is that governance of NHS health data must be simplified to drive research and innovation, supported by public engagement and transparency to build trust. The Government recognises that: “it is a precondition to the success of this Vision that the UK seizes the opportunity provided by Health Data.” Given the recent pause to the GPDPR scheme, this final point on building trust is more essential than ever.

Within this ambition to make data accessible in a trustworthy and transparent way, the Vision acknowledges that UK health data is mainly focused on managing patient records to support clinical processes, rather than aiming to enable population-wide research and analysis.

techUK’s Ten Point Plan for Healthtech highlighted this issue, stating that data held in the NHS “has the potential to transform the way that care is delivered through system level planning and population health management”. The Ten Point Plan outlined that if, in the next four to five years, the UK health and care system can make progress in achieving an ecosystem in which data can better flow both outside and inside an organisation, the results could be staggering.

Access to Data

The Life Sciences Vision outlines further priorities for improving the availability and use of health data, including taking action across the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, NHSX and NHS Digital, to continue to develop data infrastructure that can deliver first-class research and development opportunities.

For life sciences companies, quicker access to ‘real world’ data, alongside clinical and genomic data, has the potential to revolutionise the pace of clinical trials, as well as simplifying approval processes and allowing for a more accurate assessment of new technologies. The Life Sciences Vision pledges to achieve this “through innovative NHS data partnerships that fundamentally drive improvements in health outcomes and/or reduce health inequalities”.

This Vision sets out encouraging ambitions for improved collaboration between industry, Governmental and NHS bodies. Following the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, expected in late October, the Government is due to outline next steps for delivery of the Vision. In the meantime, if you would like to discuss any of the aims set out in this document, do not hesitate to get in touch.