Health and Prosperity:  the national prize for innovation policy, well implemented

For our new UK Government, there is a huge, well acknowledged opportunity, to embrace the positive impact that leading medical science and innovation can have on the nation’s health and prosperity.

To achieve this, the UK needs to advance its internationally competitive ambition statement in life sciences, outlined in sector visions and plans, with early and predictable action on implementation.

The NHS will rightly be at the forefront of the new government’s priorities, and we know that the UK public are committed to the NHS and want to see tangible improvements in healthcare provision, experience and outcomes.    

When we think about what science means to our population and the broader public mandate for this policy focus, the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE)’s Discovery Decade work, looking at public attitudes to R&D, is extremely informative.  It demonstrates that the public think positively about R&D jobs, want the UK to train the next generation of talent, and support international talent coming to the UK. These are far from niche issues – they are the foundation of our innovation economy.

As a company that is investing significantly in the UK, including in new MSD discovery research capabilities in London, an expansion of clinical trials activity across the UK, and a growing number of scientific and clinical collaborations and access pathway partnerships with the NHS, we need full confidence in the holistic implementation plans this government will develop.

We are committed to being a key partner in the health and prosperity of the nation.  For our investment to thrive in the UK we need long-term sustainable R&D investment, and skills and research infrastructure policy that prime a more research-intensive economy. 

As Medical Director for MSD in the UK, I look across the pathway, from early discovery, through translation and clinical development, to the health impact and patient outcomes that come with enabling access to new medicines and vaccines, and looking at how we learn from real world clinical experience and the experience of local health economies.

For a new government, choosing to focus on the greatest challenges and opportunities in medicines discovery and development, will catalyse scientific advances in UK translational research, attract inward investment into the UK and cement the UK‘s role as a scientific powerhouse for discovery and development of innovative therapies.

In the clinical development opportunity space, there is wide support for the implementation of the O’Shaughnessy review recommendations.  The O’Shaughnessy review made a series of recommendations, three of which will have the greatest impact in making research more efficient, accessible and inclusive in the short to medium term. Namely: (i) streamlining clinical trial approvals and set-up; (ii) expanding capacity to deliver industry clinical trials; and (iii) increasing accountability for performance.

The new government should use the Spending Review to ensure initiatives that advance these three priorities are well-resourced and delivered at pace; specifically, the clinical research workforce plan. We believe that investing in capacity now will generate significant long-term financial and patient benefits in the future.

The positive news being that there is already a new source of funding to support clinical research!  This government should commence delivery of the £400 million industry-funded Voluntary Pricing and Access Scheme (VPAG) Investment Programme.  The relevance of this goes beyond the partnership across industry and government and directly supports the NHS to deliver commercial clinical research. 

Three-quarters of the Investment Programme will be invested in boosting workforce capacity, infrastructure, and resources to expedite delivery of industry clinical trials. The government should ensure this investment is delivered at pace, in consultation with industry scheme members and system partners, so it can expand and support diverse recruitment to industry clinical trials at scale, ensuring that more of the population, who chose to be, can be research active.

To complete this picture, delivering rapid approval for the most innovative new medicines through a synergised path from regulation, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and subsequent NHS adoption is how innovation will reach more patients rapidly and save and improve more lives.  This will be the national prize for innovation policy, well implemented.

By Dr Christoph Hartmann, MD MRCS FFPM

Medical Director, MSD in the UK

Date of preparation: July 2024

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