EP 125: The future of UK Clinical Trial Policy: Innovation, integration, and game-changing legislation with Lord James O’Shaughnessy

The Genetics Podcast

0:00 Introduction

1:25 How Lord O’Shaughnessy became involved in scientific policy making and his path to writing the UK Commercial Clinical Trials Review.

04:05 How Lord O’Shaughnessy pivoted from education to a focus on life sciences

06:38 The biggest challenges Lord O’Shaughnessy faced during his time as Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health (2016-2018)

08:00 Navigating the health and care system through Brexit and the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

11:27 How the need for the UK Clinical Trials Review was identified and what challenges and issues brought the project to the fore

13:46 What the report found to explain the decline of clinical trials in the UK?

16:09 Bureaucratic challenges reducing the speed of approval and how best to balance frontline healthcare and research innovation

19:10 How best the National Health Service can support and resource research

21:50 The structural and cultural elements needed to integrate clinical research into the UK healthcare system

23:20 Accessibility of data for research purposes and the key legal and policy frameworks required to support it

26:24 How best to enable successful and safe access to frontline health data for the purposes of research

29:25 Public health emergency legislation as a model for data sharing that could power research into poorly understood conditions with high unmet needs

30:15 Building trust and transparency with the general public around using health data to support research

32:00 Key areas where the UK is excelling in research

34:28 How to ensure that research is fundamental to the healthcare system

36:01 Budgets to invest in innovation

38:35 The challenges of moving to preventative healthcare solutions

40:00 The long-term view of early-stage R&D vs. immediate frontline healthcare

41:44 Key observations on current data and healthcare policies

44:35 Closing remarks

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Please find here a link to the Wired article that Patrick references during this episode.