Patients miss out on new drugs as struggling NHS cuts trials

Patients are missing out on the latest drugs because the overstretched NHS is struggling to conduct groundbreaking research, the head of Britain’s biggest charitable foundation has warned.

John-Arne Rottingen, chief executive of the Wellcome Trust, which invests more than a billion pounds in UK research each year, said a fall in the number of commercial clinical trials would directly affect the care of thousands.

Rottingen said the “constrained NHS” meant drug companies “decide to go elsewhere”. He said: “This will mean patients will have less opportunity to benefit from being part of clinical research and they will have reduced opportunities to have advanced new treatments, which will have an impact on their opportunity to recover and be treated.”

He said the NHS was a key asset for research but that strength was dwindling because it was struggling to maintain its ability to run clinical trials. “We see the proportion of consultants who are academically qualified is going down, and the proportion of consultants that can do research as a part of their service to the NHS and the system is going down,” he said. “It’s a big concern for UK faculties of medicine that it’s harder to get clinical academics.”

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Source: The Times, 4 August 2024