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Millions of patients will be granted direct access to clinical trials under the expansion of the NHS app as part of the government’s long-awaited 10-year plan for the UK health service.
Health secretary Wes Streeting on Monday said the National Institute for Health and Care Research, a public funder of health research, would integrate a “Be Part of Research” platform with the NHS app, allowing “millions” of Britons to search for and enrol in clinical trials.
The NHS 10-year plan, to be presented by Streeting later in the summer, will set out future versions of the app, which will use patient data to match individuals with relevant trials via push notifications.
NHS trusts will be required to report on the progress of any research and numbers of patients enrolled in trials, with funding prioritised for those showing they could “support the NHS to deliver the treatments of tomorrow”.
Ministers, who have named life sciences as one of the eight “growth” sectors in their industrial strategy, believe the publicly funded NHS should be a strong selling point for pharmaceutical companies seeking to recruit a large patient population and collect data.
But the industry has previously criticised the UK for paying far less than many peer countries for products and warned that a recent rise in the UK’s medicine sales tax left the country “uninvestable”.
Dame Kate Bingham, who chaired the government’s Vaccine Taskforce during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Streeting’s announcement was “a welcome step in supercharging the UK’s national clinical trials capabilities” and that digital reach via the NHS app meant the country was “uniquely positioned to lead”.
But while the move could “massively accelerate the growth of the UK life sciences sector”, she warned of the risk that pharma companies “will not run clinical trials on innovative drugs here in the UK if there is no prospect of patients ever getting access to those drugs [because of the sales tax]”.
Britain’s Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access — where drugmakers must pay back a percentage of branded drug revenues, standing this year at a rebate of 23 per cent — “risks making the UK commercially untenable”, Bingham added.
UK officials noted that it took about 100 days to set up a clinical trial in Spain, compared with roughly 250 in the NHS. By March 2026, they said commercial clinical trial set-up times would be reduced to “150 days or less”.
Streeting said: “The NHS app will become the digital front door to the NHS, and enable all of us as citizens to play our part in developing the medicines of the future.
“By slashing through red tape . . . reforms in our 10-year plan will grow our life sciences sector, generate new funds for the NHS to reinvest in frontline care, and benefit patients through better medicines.”
