This July marks one year on from the publication of the UK Life Sciences Vision. For NHS policymakers and leaders facing unrelenting service pressures, devoting scarce energy to research and life sciences may feel like a challenging ask. Here at the Shelford Group, our members would argue that we should see research and life sciences not as a competing priority to service recovery, but as a crucial part of the answer to the challenges of today. That’s why it’s a core theme of our 3-year strategy, and the focus of these four case studies from member trusts that we’re publishing today.
The discovery, testing and delivery of better diagnostics, medicines, medical products, and technologies is profoundly important to preventing ill-health, detecting disease earlier, and prolonging life. Most visibly in recent years, partnerships between government, universities, industry and the NHS enabled the development of life-saving vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for Covid-19, with international impact. The life sciences industry benefits patients and the NHS directly, but also contributes to wider social and economic benefit, for example, through stimulating local economic growth and providing high-quality employment, a key wider determinant of health.
Shelford Group members play major co-ordinating roles in research and life sciences in their city-regions, bringing together clinicians, academics, and industry partners on the ground. We are partners in Biomedical Research Centres, Clinical Research Facilities, Genomic Medicine Service Alliances, Digital Innovation Hubs, Academic Health Science Centres and Centres sponsored by Research Charities such as Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.
We welcome the duty on Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to facilitate and promote research and the use of evidence, to be assessed as set out NHS England’s Oversight Framework, and look forward to playing our part in supporting ICSs to discharge these important functions.
As well as advocating for the value of Life Sciences more broadly, we are also looking as a group as to how we can collaborate to support faster spread of innovations that address NHS priorities. For example, academics and clinicians in Cambridge and Birmingham are working with Microsoft on using artificial intelligence technology to accelerate the differentiation of tumour and healthy tissue on cancer scans, prior to radiotherapy treatment. These approaches can help save time for clinicians and reduce waits for patients.
We intend to continue collaboration within the group and to work with our charity, academic and industry partners, as well as national bodies such as the Office of Life Sciences. We welcome the ‘missions’ set out by the OLS on critical challenges such as dementia, cancer and cardiovascular disease, and look forward to playing our part in creating the advances that will make health and care better for today and future generations.