Science and Technology Committee

The committee scrutinised how the NHS can move from pilots to system-wide adoption in innovation, personalised medicine and AI. Roland Sinker argued that progress depends less on isolated programmes than on an ecosystem approach: focused national missions, stronger co-ownership across regulators, industry and the NHS, standardised procurement and contracting, better data plumbing, and ring-fenced support for mid-career clinical academics. The academic witnesses backed the need for standardisation and regulation reform, but were much more critical about current NHS data access, interoperability, procurement and clinical-trials bureaucracy, arguing these barriers are slowing patient benefit and making the UK unattractive for innovators. Both sessions stressed that prevention, visible metrics and value-based procurement should drive adoption, while data access should be simplified and made cheaper or free for researchers.

The Science and Technology Committee scrutinised the Health Data Research Service (HDRS) as it seeks to become the UK’s front door for health data, aimed at unifying fragmented datasets, accelerating research, enabling data-enabled clinical trials, and supporting regulators and post-market surveillance. Witnesses Baroness Blackwood and Dr Melanie Ivarsson outlined HDRS’ first-year plan, including five activities, driver projects, and a push to include England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The session also covered GP data as backbone, governance, consent/public-trust issues, collaboration with HDR UK/Genomics England/UK Biobank, and the service’s path to self-funding by around 2030 (£600m funding; £500m Government + £100m Wellcome). Members pressed on political will, funding flexibility, data-standards interoperability, and commercial terms (SMEs vs big pharma) with emphasis on public benefit, transparency, and consent frameworks. A key legislative signal was discussion of the Modernisation Health Bill’s opt-out approach, and the need for a credible public-engagement strategy to sustain trust in data-driven health innovation.

This session of the Science and Technology Committee examined barriers and opportunities in deploying genomics, AI, and personalised medicines within the NHS. Witnesses Professor Sir Peter Donnelly (Genomics plc) and Dr Christian Itin (Autolus Therapeutics) outlined the clinical and economic potential of polygenic risk scores, CAR-T like therapies, and AI imaging, alongside the NHS’s adoption challenges. Key government commitments cited included the NHS 10-year plan to roll out polygenic risk scores universally and the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy’s use of procurement to support UK-grown companies. The witnesses called for closer cross-government alignment (NICE, MHRA, NHS and Treasury), real-world data capture, streamlined procurement, and improved capital access to scale innovations within the NHS and for global competitiveness.

This session scrutinised the NHS Genomic Medicine Service’s current delivery, universal genomic testing, and how genomics informs prevention, diagnosis and treatment. It also explored how the NHS plans to scale innovations, the role of Our Future Health and UK Biobank in building evidence and pipelines for population health, and the integration of AI. Key government commitments surfaced include: national commissioning via a genomic test directory with equitable access, a 2035 target for genomically informed interventions, a national AI/health-data governance approach, and plans to centralise data access through HDRS while expanding the genomics workforce and education within the NHS.

This 14 April 2026 session of the Science and Technology Committee scrutinised the Health Data Research landscape, focusing on the Health Data Research Service (HDRS), Health Data Research UK (HDRUK), and NHS data governance. Witnesses highlighted government investment in HDRS as complementary to HDRUK, the need to treat health data as critical national infrastructure, and the aim to create a UK-wide, interoperable data-ecosystem with a single front door for access. Key concerns included lengthy data-access times (18 months deemed unacceptable), the risks of vendor lock-in in NHS IT procurement (notably Palantir), governance complexities across the four nations, and the importance of public trust achieved through transparent engagement, early-use cases, and clear benefit-sharing with patients and the NHS. The witnesses urged long-term commitment, streamlined data governance, and the development of a federated, interoperable model for international collaboration, while stressing the primacy of public-benefit and NHS data control. The session also explored the balance between public benefit and economic return, and the need for workforce development (data scientists, clinical academics) to realise diagnostics, precision medicine, and AI-enabled health services.

The session probed how CATAPULTs (Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult; Medicines Discovery Catapult) see UK capability building in personalised medicine and AI, including four critical conditions for scale (technology flow, lower cost of goods, manufacturing capacity, uptake), the role of large markets and NHS access, and the need for regulatory and data-access reforms. A subsequent panel emphasized the limits of genomic prediction for individuals, ethical data governance, consent, trust, and the importance of context, public engagement, and boundary-spanning governance to realise responsible, AI-enabled health innovation.