This page explains why the UK is a global leader in life sciences and why you should choose the UK for your next programme of health research.
Internationally recognised for health research
Have you ever wondered why the UK is one of the top destinations in the world for life science organisations delivering programmes of cutting-edge health research?
Our international recognition is both long-established and multifaceted; a story that is too long to tell in full here. However, the secret to our success depends upon a few key ingredients which together give the UK a leading edge over other countries.
A single, publicly-funded healthcare provider - the NHS
Easily the UK’s biggest selling point when it comes to health and care research. Our National Health Service (NHS) is the largest publicly-funded healthcare system, free at the point of care for 67 million people, treating approximately 1.4 million patients every 24 hours. It’s available to everyone, no one is excluded. It also happens to be the second-largest single-payer healthcare system in the world.
Launched in 1948, our NHS covers everything from antenatal screening and routine treatments for long-term conditions, to transplants, emergency treatment and end-of-life care. With one unique NHS number per patient, the richness of this data provides limitless possibilities for health data research - unparalleled by any other country worldwide. The breadth and longevity of this data alone makes the UK a world-leader. Our ability to utilise that data for health research is rapidly expanding and unleashing new opportunities all the time.
Add that to the fact that research is part of the NHS’ remit. The NHS Constitution includes a pledge that everyone has the right to be informed of research studies they are eligible to take part in. For the last 5 years, 100% of National Health Service (NHS) organisations have been research-active and 75% have contributed to commercially-sponsored clinical trials.
A research-engaged population
To further drive research engagement and participation, organisations in the UK have developed digital engagement tools such as research registries and other tools. As well as providing our research-active population with a mechanism for volunteering to take part in research, these tools help researchers to find and recruit research participants for specific studies. These tools are also being used increasingly to support data-driven feasibility decisions and trial planning processes.
Thriving life sciences sector
The UK offers a robust, business-friendly environment for all life sciences sectors with tax relief options for organisations seeking to advance science or technology. More than 5,600 life sciences businesses already operate in the UK, including all of the top 25 global pharmaceutical companies and top 30 global medical technology companies. Approximately 268,000 people are directly employed in the industry and the UK is a thriving hub for global talent.
Further information on the UK’s healthcare and life sciences business environment is available on the Department for Business and Trade website.
World-leading science base
The UK is home to 4 of the top 10 global universities for life sciences and medicine. It is the host of 137 Nobel Prizes (second only to the US), with an enviable track record of scientific breakthroughs including:
- the discovery of penicillin
- the structure of DNA
- advances in neuroscience and medical imaging
- developments in stem cells and IVF
- applying artificial intelligence and data science to biological problems.
The UK also produces the third highest number of life sciences papers in high-quality journals worldwide (after the USA and China).
Highly collaborative research culture
Our collaborative culture is second to none and underpins our scientific prowess. A recent survey of 15 companies by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) identified over 1,000 links between academia and the pharmaceutical industry.
A shining example of our collaborative capabilities was the UK’s success in developing and delivering COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The NIHR, NHS, regulators and commercial partners came together to deliver ground-breaking research and save lives. More than one million people took part in our research studies and the UK led the world with trials like RECOVERY, PANORAMIC, and PRINCIPLE.
Over 50,000 of COVID-19 research participants volunteered for vaccine trials, demonstrating the UK’s ability to rapidly upscale our research operations. The UK Vaccine Innovation Pathway has been built upon the learnings and successes of the pandemic and introduces new initiatives to ensure that vaccine clinical trials continue to be delivered at pace and scale. From traditional and mRNA vaccines, to personalised neoantigen cancer therapy, this targeted support ensures that the UK remains a ‘go-to destination’ for clinical trials of all vaccines.
It’s also worth emphasising that the UK’s collaborative environment incorporates 4 different nations. The NIHR in England works hand-in-hand with its equivalents in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Our research systems and processes are UK-wide, for example, regulatory and ethics approvals, costing and contracting . This means that companies bringing research to the UK are guaranteed easier access to all four nations simultaneously.
Continuing political commitment to life sciences
Our government has consistently demonstrated its commitment to supporting the life sciences sector to develop and deliver research in the UK. For over a decade our political leaders have articulated evermore ambitious plans to make the UK the most attractive place in the world for life sciences innovation.
Since 2011, a series of visions, strategies and policies, reinforced with investment into our national research system, have set out the UK government's roadmap towards maintaining our leading position in the global clinical trials landscape.
In recent policy papers (Life Sciences Vision and The Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery) the mission is clear - to implement everything we learned from the pandemic to build an stronger and more resilient research system. This continued commitment was confirmed with a substantial increase in research and development (R&D) investment elevating the annual funding from approximately £9 billion in 2017, to £22 billion (2.4% of GDP) by 2026-2027.
In 2023, the UK government’s ambition to streamline and speed up clinical trials even further was highlighted through the commissioning of an independent review of the UK’s commercial clinical trial sector. The government response describes which recommendations from the review are being implemented. It also outlined a number of recommendations that have already been implemented in the sector. This includes reaching a 60-day turnaround for the approval of commercial clinical trials and a national approach to costing and contracting for commercial contract research which has already cut study set-up times by a third.
Free support from the most integrated health research system in the world
More than £1.3 billion of the R&D funding (described above) is invested annually in our organisation - the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) . This funding enables and supports translational, clinical, and applied health and social care research spanning the whole innovation pathway. It also makes us the largest and most integrated, government-funded health research system in the world.
By ‘integrated’, we mean that many of the people and facilities we fund are embedded in our health and care system. So you will find NIHR-funded research facilities inside NHS hospitals, NIHR-funded research nurses on NHS wards, and we also part-fund many NHS clinicians and clinical academics so that they can dedicate time to research, share their expertise and help drive innovation across health and care services.
We also work beyond the hospital clinic supporting and delivering research in primary care (e.g. general practice, dentists, pharmacies) and also across the wider social and community care environment (e.g. care homes, schools, prisons).
A significant part of our remit is to work in partnership with the life sciences industry to help you plan, place and deliver research here in the UK. Which services you access will depend upon what kind of research you are doing, what kind of evidence you need to generate, and where you are in your research journey. We can potentially support any health innovator, of any size, from any sector of the life sciences industry. From pharma giants, to medium medtechs, to healthtech start-up and biotech spin-outs, our advice is the same - contact us as early as possible to discuss your needs.
Take a look at some numbers to give you a sense of the scale of our work:
- Our research workforce comprises over 14,000 FTE (full-time equivalent) posts.
- We routinely support between 5,000 and 6,000 studies each year, of which around 1,500 of those studies are commercially-sponsored and funded.
- More than 5 million people have taken part in research we have supported in the last 5 years and, on average, 35,000 of those people per year take part in studies that are commercially-sponsored and funded.
- Each year we help to initiate around 1,500 collaborations between SME companies and leading academics and clinicians across the UK health and care ecosystem
You can read about the work of the NIHR across our website or visit our NIHR services for the life sciences industry page to discover our full range of services and support.
As well as being embedded in the NHS, the NIHR is seamlessly connected to the rest of the UK’s unique research ecosystem. This includes our world-class universities, health and research regulators, government departments focusing on science, innovation, trade and investment, and research funding bodies and charities. We can help you navigate the UK research landscape and - here’s the deal clincher - most of the support and services we offer are free.
Forward-thinking regulators
Our research regulators demonstrated their agility during the COVID-19 pandemic as they adapted ways of working to focus on getting treatments to patients as safely and quickly as possible. With ongoing commitment to supporting innovation and speeding up clinical trials, the MHRA and HRA continue to work together introducing new regulatory routes such as Combined Review (streamlined process for clinical trial approvals) and ILAP (the innovative licencing and access pathway for medicines) and a new similar pathway for medical devices: IDAP (the innovative devices access pathway). They continue to meet new, ambitious targets to ensure that all clinical trials application timelines are globally competitive.
Unique research opportunities
The components described above come together in a way that gives the UK unique research capabilities and enable us to offer research opportunities that differ from other countries. Whereas some of these opportunities are well documented - such as our health data research capabilities - other areas of expertise and experience may be less visible, especially if you are not familiar with the UK environment.
Take equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for example. The ability to deliver inclusive research brings many benefits and truly inclusive research requires an adaptive approach. In the UK, we offer many opportunities to address EDI challenges at different stages of your research journey.
A completely different area of strength is the delivery of novel, complex and innovative clinical trials. In the UK, we have been delivering these types of trials for almost 2 decades. It was this expertise of designing and delivering adaptive platform design trials, combined with our collaborative research culture, that underpinned the UK’s fight against COVID-19. As far back as 2005, trials like STAMPEDE, FOCUS3 and FOCUS4 and National Lung Matrix Trial began laying the groundwork for the trials that were successful in combating COVID-19.
Similarly, UK capability to deliver Decentralised Clinical Trials (DCTs) is now transforming research delivery across the nation. We are establishing more ways to take health and care research to the people, giving them the choice about how and where they participate.
Another area of strength can be found in our early-phase trial ability. The UK is one of the top three destinations for commercial early-phase trials in the world and delivered 12% of all global trials for innovative cell and gene therapies in 2019. Our NIHR-funded early-phase infrastructure and expertise is a key contributor to this success.
