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We’ve recently written about the UK’s industrial strategy and its specific plans for the tech and creative sectors. It has now published its life sciences sector plan – and so has the EU…
United Kingdom
Food, Drugs, Healthcare, Life Sciences
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We’ve recently written about the UK’s industrial
strategy and its specific plans for the tech and creative sectors.
It has now published its life sciences sector plan – and so has the EU,
which illustrates the importance of the sector to economies.
UK sector plan
The Plan aims to position the UK as the leading life sciences
economy in Europe by 2030, and the third globally by 2035, behind
only the United States and China.
The government says that the UK life sciences sector faces
perennial challenges: it excels at discovery, with pharmaceutical
R&D accounting for 17% of all UK business R&D in 2023, the
highest of any product area, but struggles with commercialisation
and adoption.
Its life sciences plan focused on these three pillars:
- Enabling world-class R&D to build on the UK’s
scientific strengths. - Making the UK an outstanding place in which to start, grow,
scale, and invest. - Driving health innovation and NHS reform – ensuring
patients get rapid access to the most clinically and cost-effective
new technologies, and enabling the shifts from sickness to
prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital.
As part of the three pillars, the government has committed to
six headline actions:
- Creating a health data research service to offer a secure
single access point to national-scale data sets; - Reducing trial set up times to under 150 days;
- Investing up to £520 million in manufacturing;
- Streamlining regulation and market access;
- Introducing low-friction procurement; and
- Partnering with industry to drive growth and innovation.
EU strategy
The EU also launched its strategy for the life sciences this month and
says it wants “to make Europe the most attractive place in the
world for life sciences by 2030. The strategy sets out measures
across the entire life sciences value chain to accelerate
innovation, facilitate market access, and build public trust in new
technologies, ensuring they benefit the people and the
planet.”
The strategy also comprises three pillars:
- Optimising the R&I ecosystem to achieve a globally
competitive life science sector: by bringing together life science
disciplines, stakeholders and funding as well as by strengthening
support to pan-European research and technology infrastructure and
optimised production processes; - Ensuring smooth and rapid market access for life science
innovations: through more innovation-friendly regulation, use of
the innovation principle as well as regulatory sandboxes, and
better mobilisation of private and public investments; - Boosting the uptake and use of life science innovation: through
better ways to engage with citizens to beat disinformation and
build trust, and to work closer with end-users to ensure adequate
solutions for their specific needs.
Both strategies are high level, and it remains to be seen
whether warm words will translate into concrete actions.
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