The U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency reported the winners of the second phase of the AI Airlock challenge, which includes the Tortus AI, a medical scribe system developed by physicians in the U.K. National Health Service.
The U.K. government revealed its much anticipated 10-year plan to get the National Health Service back on its feet and fit for the future. It is betting on five technologies – data, AI, Genomics, wearables and robotics – to drive the change needed to transform the health care system.
As the health care industry eagerly awaits the U.K. government’s 10-year plan to transform the national health service, persistent systemic challenges may make change difficult to realize. While the deployment of AI, medical technologies and diagnostic tools are crucial to this transformation, barriers to adoption must be addressed for the plan to be successful.
The U.K. government will soon unveil its 10-year health plan to transform the National Health Service. The aim is to tackle the problems in the 76-year-old system and make it fit for the future. The aim is to tackle the problems in the 76-year-old system and make it fit for the future.
The U.K. government has announced the latest measures to speed up and expand clinical trials, launching Be Part of Research, a central national register where people can search and sign up to take part in studies.
Pharma companies in the U.K. said the rebate they are required to make on drug sales is making the country “un-investible,” prompting staff cuts and leading clinical research partnerships to be unwound. Rather than the 15.3% rebate on branded drugs companies expected to pay this year, the rate has leapt to 22.9%. That has left the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicine Pricing and Access “in crisis,” according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries.
The U.K. is continuing to shape up regulation, adding reform of its accelerated drug approval process and its draft guidance on personalized mRNA cancer vaccines to new clinical trial regulations that will come into force early in 2026. The Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway has been relaunched following a review of the industry’s experience of the scheme since its introduction in January 2021, and it will be open for applications from next month.
The five-year voluntary pricing deal between pharma companies and the U.K. Department of Health is under severe pressure after the rebate the industry is due to pay leapt from 15.3% in 2024 to 22.9% for 2025. That has put “a very real strain” on companies, which have not factored this into their 2025 budgets because they were planning around an agreed forecast that the 2025 rebate rate would remain at around 15%, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries (ABPI).
The U.K. government will unveil its 10-year health plan to transform the national health service (NHS) in the coming months. At the center of this transformation is expected to be the adoption of artificial intelligence, digital and medical technologies. However, challenges in the NHS around its ‘core technology’, data capture and interoperability must be addressed before the government’s ambition can be realized.
The U.K.'s Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency chose five technologies for its AI Airlock pilot program as it looks to understand the best way to regulate artificial intelligence-powered medical devices so that they can be safely deployed across the national health service.
