UK Government invests millions into new health data service

From a continental European perspective, the UK government’s latest project sheds an exciting light on the attempt to catch up in clinical research: the UK is investing the equivalent of around US$764m (600 million pounds) in a centralised health data platform, which is intended to significantly accelerate the initiation of clinical trials in particular.

In collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, a national ‘Health Data Research Service’ is to be created – a standardised, secure access point for research data from the healthcare sector. The aim is to reduce bureaucratic hurdles, introduce standard contracts and thus shorten the preparation time for clinical trials to 150 days by March 2026. It is currently still over 250 days.

This measure comes against a backdrop of growing criticism: a report from 2023 showed that the UK had fallen from fourth to tenth place in the global ranking for clinical trials. 27 reform recommendations were made – including a new regulatory basis, which was presented to Parliament in the same year.

The British pharmaceutical industry expressly welcomes the investment. GSK CEO Emma Walmsley sees the project as a historic opportunity according to an article of Global Data: ‘The secure use of health data combined with an innovation-friendly NHS can pave the way for new medicines and vaccines.’ Prof Cathie Sudlow, author of the Sudlow Report of the same name, also calls the project a potential ‘game changer’ for data-based research.

This step is being watched with interest on the continent – particularly because the centralised use of large health data sets and research-friendly regulation are also key issues for the future in the EU. While the UK wants to make up for the after-effects of Brexit in the field of research, European countries could derive important impetus for their own strategies from the British reforms and investments which also try to work crossborders with all four nations of the UK.

See more about the Sudlow report and a link to a livley discussion at its presentation in November 2024: