5th December 2011
David Cameron eyes NHS-life sciences partnership
BBC News – 5 December 2011 Last updated at 09:57
The NHS should be "opened up" to private healthcare firms under plans which include sharing anonymous patient data, David Cameron is due to announce.
He is expected to say that the "end-game" for the health service is to drive innovation and growth by working "hand-in-glove" with industry.
The PM wants to give patients faster access to new treatments and make the life sciences sector a world leader.
But critics say commercial interests are being put ahead of patient privacy.
Ministers believe Britain can become a world leader in the field of life sciences – an industry already worth £50bn a year and employing 160,000 people – because of the expertise within the NHS and its strong university-based research.
In a keynote speech in London on Monday, Mr Cameron is expected to say the coalition’s key strategy is to open up the NHS to new ideas.
"The end-game is for the NHS to be working hand-in-glove with industry as the fastest adopter of new ideas in the world," he is due to say.
That would act as a "huge magnet to pull new innovations through, right along the food-chain – from the labs, to the boardrooms, to the hospital bed", he will add.
Under the plans, details of which first emerged on Sunday, NHS records would be made anonymous and data made available to private firms.
Closer collaboration could also give companies more freedom to run clinical trials inside hospitals.
Mr Cameron is expected to announce a £180m fund to help commercialize medical breakthroughs, and also reveal plans to consult on an "early access scheme" to put new drugs in NHS hospitals more quickly.
"We must ensure that the UK stays ahead," he is expected to say. "Because yes, we’ve got a leading science base; yes, we’ve got four of the world’s top 10 universities; and yes, we have a National Health Service unlike any other.
"But my argument today is that these strengths alone are not enough, that to keep pace with what’s happening we’ve got to change radically – the way we innovate, the way we collaborate, the way we open up the NHS."