Professor Henrietta Hughes: Putting patient safety at the heart of regulatory innovation (3 November 2025)

Summary

Professor Henrietta Hughes reflects on how the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) strategy must prioritise patient safety via listening to lived experiences, fostering collaboration & innovation.

Content

As the MHRA develops its upcoming corporate strategy in an era of rapid medical advancement and technological change, patient safety must remain its unwavering compass.

In a guest blog for the MHRA, England’s Patient Safety Commissioner Professor Henrietta Hughes reflects on the essential truth that the most powerful insights into safety come not only from data, trials, or algorithms, but from the lived experiences of patients themselves. When patients are listened to, when their perspectives are valued from the outset, harm can be prevented and genuine improvement achieved.

This piece calls for a culture of listening - to patients, to professionals, and to evidence - and for a new model of collaboration that places patients at the heart of every regulatory decision. True innovation is not only about what technology can achieve, but about how safely and equitably it serves those who rely on it.