Unless you’ve been on a beach or trekking up a mountain, you will know that this summer the UK Government has been setting out how the NHS will be transformed and how the UK will cement its position as a world leader in life sciences.
Momentum began with Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham OM KBE PC FRS 2024 report, describing the NHS as “broken” and prompting The Rt. Hon. Wes Streeting MP to outline three strategic shifts: moving from treatment to prevention; shifting more care into the community; and embracing digital innovation over analogue systems.
At genedrive, we welcome the ambition of the newly published NHS 10-Year Plan, which aims to raise standards, reduce waiting lists, and keep people healthier for longer. Alongside this, the Life Sciences Sector Plan provides a roadmap for harnessing the sector’s power to innovate, scale and make it central to the Government’s industrial strategy and drive growth across the entire nation.
Less widely reported, but equally significant, was the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency Statement of Policy Intent: Early Access to Innovative Medical Devices, setting out a supportive, risk-proportionate regulatory environment to ensure safe, timely access to technologies that address unmet NHS needs. Practically, this means faster regulatory approvals, streamlined market access, and making Great Britain an increasingly attractive base for innovators to start, grow, scale, and invest.
Initiatives such as NICE – National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved medtech funding routes and the NHS Innovator Passport are welcome steps. But for real impact, funding decisions MUST be swift and strategic. If prevention is truly at the heart of the Government’s mission, we must urgently prioritise long-term system savings and central funding pools over leaving isolated departments constrained and unable to adopt innovation quickly.
We are energised by the collective impact these measures could have. At genedrive, our products are CE-IVD approved, NICE-recommended, and offer significantly better patient outcomes whilst truly enabling financial and productivity gains to pressured healthcare systems. Aligning fully with NHS reform ambitions and specifically, “prevention” rather than treatment.
We look forward to working with the NHS, regulators, and industry to create a simpler, faster, and more collaborative environment. With the right structures, timely decisions and sensible access to reallocation of unnecessarily wasteful financial resources, transforming patient care while driving economic growth is within reach.
