Changing the innovation landscape in the UK's National Health Service to meet its future challenges

Abstract:

The UK’s National Health Service is widely held to be lagging behind the health systems of other countries in its innovativeness. In particular, there is said to be a “technology deficit” in certain clinical areas, such that patients are unable to access the latest drugs or medical devices. Moreover, the UK conducts world-leading research in health-related sciences and has a globally competitive pharmaceutical industry and sizeable medical technology sector, yet there have been persistent concerns about the translation of this research into products that can be commercialized. The last 15 years have seen successive attempts to rectify this situation and improve the flow of health care innovations into practice. In addition, the importance of organizational innovation to improve productivity and clinical, quality, and safety performance has been recognized. This is becoming more urgent given the need to meet the challenges of rising demand for health care at a time of increasingly constrained resources. This review discusses the changing landscape of policy and other interventions that have been put in place to tackle the factors that inhibit health care-related innovation in the UK.

Keywords::

• health care
• policy
• medical technology
• pharmaceuticals
• research translation

Disclosure

The author reports no conflicts of interest in this work.