Prime Minister turbocharges medical research

Better and faster access to NHS data for researchers, with gold standard security and privacy measures.

The Prime Minister has today 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. 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. We already saw the power of health data during the pandemic and this will allow the NHS to make huge strides in patient care.

The changes are a major boost for the life sciences sector as the government goes further and faster in delivering the Plan for Change and reshaping our economy in response to the new era of global insecurity.