Could the Life Sciences Sector Plan be more transformational for the NHS than the 10-Year Health Plan?

Real service transformation in the NHS cannot be achieved through the piecemeal adoption of innovation. We know that adoption must happen at scale and with close attention to capability, readiness, training and evaluation.

It was therefore a relief to see that the Life Sciences Sector Plan (LSSP) – published as part of the Modern Industrial Strategy and following the 10-Year Health Plan – reinvigorates attempts to tackle the ‘perennial’ adoption challenge the NHS faces, despite the UK excelling at innovation itself. 

Influential figures have been making precisely this point, emphasising that cracking adoption will be the real game-changer. Roland Sinker’s review of the innovation ecosystem found that despite an ‘abundance’ of innovative solutions in the NHS, ‘spreading and scaling their adoption remain our biggest challenge.’ And Lord Darzi highlighted that ‘too many proven technologies languish in pilot programmes, suffocated by the complexity of our health and care system.’ The Health Foundation’s own analysis has suggested that the adoption and rapid-evaluation of innovation is relatively underfunded compared with development.

The LSSP focuses on adoption by tackling the often-ignored, less headline-grabbing areas of policy that can make a real difference to scaling innovation. The plan emphasises the importance of this approach by firmly linking industrial strategy and the UK’s health. These two facets are underpinned by a delivery-focused document. When compared with the vision-orientated but detail-light 10-Year Health Plan, the life sciences strategy is an encouraging read.

Tackling the ‘boring’ bits

The LSSP focuses on several topics that the political spotlight seldom highlights, including capacity for regulatory bodies, new frameworks and the need to connect different parts of the system. 

In July 2024, we called for a regulatory framework to provide clarity and consistency for AI developers and users, prioritising the coordination of sectoral regulators and bringing together relevant bodies to address gaps and overlaps. This plan sets out some promising steps in this direction. By increasing support for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to enable it to become a ‘faster, more agile regulator’, the plan could make a tangible difference to staff and patients in the UK. This includes by increasing capacity to expand the AI Airlock project; publishing a new regulatory framework for AI in 2026; and enhancing coordination with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). 

Linking industrial strategy and NHS reform

The plan signals what could be a radical shift: a government for which industrial policy and health policy are no longer detached. In making the link between effective adoption of innovation at scale in the NHS, better health and economic strategy explicit, the strategy is a significant win for health care innovation – ‘It is a model that recognises that better health and stronger growth go hand in hand, and that, increasingly, the most effective healthcare relies on the rapid adoption of new technologies and treatments.’ 

The plan is also reassuringly connected to the 10-Year Health Plan. Several policy proposals are repeated across both documents, including the introduction of an ‘innovator passport’, the funding of a Health Data Research Service, and the creation of ‘regional health innovation zones’.

An action-focused approach

There are questions that the LSSP will need to answer when delivering these policies. For example, there are plans to bring in a national scheme for the procurement of innovation to ensure better value. This sounds sensible, but how will it sit alongside the direction of greater devolution set out in the 10-Year Health Plan? Similarly, there is a commitment to a continuing role for the health innovation networks, alongside the new innovation zones and ‘global institutes’, without detail of how this new infrastructure will come together. 

Nevertheless, there is a greater willingness from government to set out national innovation priorities and evidence of detailed thinking. Perhaps the most promising aspect is that every policy commitment includes metrics to track progress and a named senior responsible officer (in addition to an annual implementation update). With implementation details noticeably lacking from the 10-Year Health Plan, it is refreshing to see a strategy with this level of specificity, co-signed by the three secretaries of state that will need to work together to make it happen. 

More government strategies would do well to take a leaf out of this book. By focusing on implementation, the LSSP stands a real chance of cracking the thorny issues that past innovation strategies have failed to solve.