UK sets plan to be Euro life sciences leader by 2030
The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to become the leading life sciences economy in Europe in five years and the third most important global life sciences economy by 2035. The plan includes significant reforms to the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).On 16 July, the UK government published its Life Sciences Sector Plan, which lays out specific steps and metrics it wants to achieve over the next decade to advance the country's medical and healthcare sectors. Broadly, the plan aims to advance medical research and development in the UK, attract medical manufacturing investment, and drive healthcare innovations.
“The Government will not repeat the mistakes of past strategies that offered warm words without concrete action or hinted at difficult trade-offs without confronting them,” according to the plan. “This Sector Plan sets out specific commitments across each of the three core pillars. Every commitment includes metrics to track progress and has a named Senior Responsible Officer (SRO).”
One key commitment is to streamline regulations and market access for medical product manufacturers. The government says it wants MHRA to become faster and more agile and provide clearer guidance to industry on how to get their products to market. It also wants to support a parallel approval pathway for MHRA and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK’s health technology assessment agency, and allow for the use of international regulatory reliance to allow products on the market faster.
The government said that the Department for Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) Design for Life Program plans to present a pre-market pathway, which includes the International Reliance Framework, for parliamentary approval in the fall of 2026.
“The UK’s Life Sciences ecosystem benefits enormously from the expertise of the MHRA and NICE,” said the plan. “However, there is a recognition that more can be done, by both agencies individually and collectively, to get new innovations to the NHS and wider healthcare providers faster, where safe and cost-effective.”
The government says it wants to boost investment in MHRA to help the agency reduce unwarranted market barriers and to provide more predictable regulatory approval pathways. That includes investments to expand activities such as the agency’s AI Airlock project, which is currently a regulatory pilot to help the agency evaluate artificial intelligence as a medical device products.
The plan also aims to help MHRA with its digital transformation and use of AI to speed regulatory work; ensure MHRA works with stakeholders, including the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO), to assess how AI can be used in drug discovery; and allow the evaluation of medical devices based on their applications to comparable regulator countries.
To attract research and development to the UK, the government said it will promote closer coordination between health and life science research funders. Part of that includes creating a new single database for UK clinical trials.
“This will operate as a comprehensive database for all ethically approved research, utilizing data from the MHRA, Health Research Authority (HRA), and other relevant national organizations in the devolved governments to showcase the clinical trial activity within the UK,” said the government.
UK life sciences sector plan
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