Curia launches its Life Sciences Industrial Strategy with insights from top-level stakeholders in the sector.
Following several meetings with Life Sciences sector stakeholders, policy institute Curia’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy Programme for a New Government was launched last month. The second inquiry session focused on ‘Investment, Jobs and Growth.’ Chaired by Richard Stubbs, Chair of the national Health Innovation Network, Dr Tony Hockley, Director of the Policy Analysis Centre at the London School of Economics, Dr Keith Ridge, former Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for NHS England, and former Health Minister, Professor Ann Keen. Keynote speakers joined the Health, Care and Life Sciences Research Group. These included:
- Richard Phillips, Executive Director of Policy, and Partnerships, ABHI
- Helen Dent, Interim Chief Executive, BIVDA
- Angela McFarlane, Vice President, Strategic Planning Northern Europe, IQVIA
Life Sciences: Healthtech and Implementation:
Richard Phillips kicked off the meeting by explaining that health technology is a different industry to the rest of life sciences. On average Healthtech takes 12-18 months to implement compared to 10-12 years for pharmaceuticals. Regulating Healthtech is challenging, including assessment and health system integration (most Healthtech requires pathway change). He was concerned with maintaining the UK’s economic attractiveness to grow the economy in general and specifically the life sciences sector.
“Half of companies in our recent survey, at the end of last year, removed products from the market because of regulatory challenges. A quarter removed them because of the price the NHS is willing to pay, and two thirds are delay in bringing innovation into the UK.”
Richard Phillips, Executive Director of Policy, and Partnerships, ABHI
He advised that the best option is to make the NHS a better place to sell to. Lots of companies are moving to the US or scaling back their UK distribution. Tax credit thresholds are often too high for small companies though the Life Science Innovation Manufacturing fund coming into force will help to offset this. The UK spends significantly more on research than on implementation, these positions need to be reversed.
Life Sciences: Increasing the UK’s investment:
Helen Dent strongly agreed with Richard and additionally suggested the UK look at risk and gain sharing with long term partnerships. To help facilitate this funding should be lifecycle based not annual. This would be determined by how long the product is going to be used and when does it need return on investment to be attractive to investors. Furthermore, she suggested premium funding for companies meeting national objectives such as jobs, equality, or sustainability.
Innovations Taking Too Long?
Concluding the speaker presentations Angela McFarlane warned cancer studies in the UK declined by 50%. She stated that the UK needs to implement the O’Shaughnessy review recommendations as it can take up to four years on average for innovations to be implemented by ICS’ after two years going through NICE. We are behind Europe as their cancer trails are not done against a placebo baseline but by their improvement over current standards.
Incentivising Private Investment:
The chairs then opened the meeting to questions, firstly on direct incentives to private investment. Phillips advised linking incentives funding for research and implementation ensuring innovations are supported throughout their life cycle. Dent agreed there is not enough support for implementation. Many companies have a NICE recommendation but cannot get to market and are about to cease trading! She wanted the UK to recognise that commercialisation is not the only measure of success for innovations.
Getting Hospitals Invested:
“Global sponsors, when they are thinking about which countries they are going to invest in, are going to go for the country that can get first patient in study as quickly as possible. We did well in Covid, and we were running most of the COVID vaccine studies and the UK was well, first patient in every single time.”
Angela McFarlane, Vice President, Strategic Planning Northern Europe, IQVIA
After covid, however, a lot of researchers returned to the front line at hospitals and do not have time for research. She suggested bringing technology and AI in and let hospitals do the studies on site, encouraging staff to be freed up for research.
Dent highlighted that UK health data is enormous- the largest single payer health system in the world. However, information governance gets in the way and structural change is needed. She feels the UK needs to be less squeamish about sharing data. Another problem is that research is nobody’s “job,” and that the UK needs a chief innovation officer at board level in all NHS organisations.
Growth as a National Benefit:
Dent felt that both ideas and manufacturing need to be considered valuable and remember that life sciences can be done in any part of the country. Angela followed up by advocating looking for regions that optimize a health data enabled approach, using the UK unique asset of longitudinal data. Phillips emphasised that health equals wealth.
Final thoughts: Health, care and Life Sciences Research Group:
As the Research Group continues the first phase of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy Programme, and investigates launching similar work on oncology, we invite thought leaders to get involved.
We thank lead sponsors of the Programme: IQVIA and Genomics Plc.
Curia’s interim report will be launched after Easter, where we will be inviting supporters of Curia and members of the Research Group to attend. You can sign up to the Curia Newsletter here to be kept informed about our events and reports. Furthermore, members of the Research Group will gain access to the full work of the Programme, including the full recording of the inquiry session.
Finally, with the aim to showcase how to turn policy into practice, the Curia team are always interested in receiving case studies of best practice that may feed into this work. If you or a colleague might know about a case where policy was effectively delivered into practice, please send details of the case study with learnings to team@curiauk.com. These will be shared with our Research Group Advisory Board, leaders in the NHS/public sector and Health, Care and Life Sciences Research Group members.
This article was written by Joshua Coyle.