August 28, 2025

UK Industrial Strategy Sector Plans | Life Sciences

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Scott Preece

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On 23 June 2025, the UK Government published details of its industrial strategy over the coming 10 years across several detailed Sector Plans.

This note touches on the Sector Plan for Life Sciences. See our separate note for a general overview of the wider industrial strategy and links to other Sector Plans.

The Plan identifies the Life Sciences sector as “one of our greatest national assets,” crucial for saving lives, creating jobs, driving investment, and powering innovation. As with other Sector Plans, it places emphasis on the need to reduce regulatory burden and speed up pathways to innovation and commercialisation, though for the Life Sciences sector this is all underpinned by “three major health shifts”:

From hospital to community: enabling care closer to home, supported by new diagnostics and digital tools.
From analogue to digital: embedding data and AI to improve outcomes and reduce pressure on frontline staff.
From sickness to prevention: using genomics, early detection, and personalised medicine to keep people healthier for longer.

The Government state their objectives are for the UK to be the leading Life Sciences economy in Europe by 2030 and the third globally (behind the US and China) by 2035. But what actions are the Government committing to in order to achieve this?

Here are some of the key points we spotted, referencing the three core “strategic pillars” set out in the Plan:

Enabling World Class R&D

A strong R&D pipeline and investment into R&D are recognised as key in order to “lay the essential research foundations for the UK’s leadership in Life Sciences”. Actions include:

Research models and data

Pre-clinical models:

At least £30 million of funding to establish pre-clinical translational infrastructure, with the ultimate aim of producing alternative pre-clinical models which will “reduce and, where possible, eliminate the use of animals” in development processes.
Health Data Research Service:

Funding the new Health Data Research Service (HDRS) with up to £600 million to create “the world’s most advanced, secure, and AI-ready health data platform”. This is viewed as a hugely significant means of encouraging international investment and R&D into the UK, with an intention for the HDRS to “transform access to research-ready health data, making national population-scale data assets and deep multi-modal data securely available for commercial, academic, and other research on an unprecedented scale”.
Expanded datasets:

Expanding the UK’s consented health research datasets backed with significant funding commitments (including building Our Future Health to 5 million participants by 2030, UK Biobank enhancement, and boosting Genomics England to 500,000 genomes in its database).
AI:

Establishing “mechanisms to incentivise researchers in leveraging AI to accelerate scientific discovery”, aided by the simplified access to NHS data provided by the HDRS.
Coordination:

Encouraging closer coordination and collaboration across UK Life Sciences research and funding by creation of a “comprehensive UK database for clinical trials”.

Renewed focus and efficiencies

Prevention over cure:

Shifting R&D investment focus to encourage more capital into prevention, rather than cure, “supporting shifts in Medical Research Council and NIHR funding flows to increase the proportion of the budget invested into the prevention, detection, and treatment of physical and mental long-term conditions”.
R&D Innovation catalyst:

A new NIHR R&D Innovation Catalyst to be introduced in order to “provide R&D funding through the translational phases of research if key milestones are met”, accompanied by “wraparound support [which] will connect innovators to testbeds, venture capital funds, regulators, procurement processes, and support for commercialisation”.
Efficiency:

Reducing the set-up time for commercial interventional clinical trials to fewer than 150 days by March 2026, primarily by implementing the O’Shaughnessy reforms.
Governance:

Updating the NIHR’s governance model to adopt a “dual health and growth mandate.”

Making the UK an outstanding place in which to start, grow, scale, and invest

Focused on creating a “robust business environment which makes the UK an attractive destination for Life Sciences start‑ups and investments”. Actions are split across five key areas and include the following:

Access to finance:

British Business Bank (BBB) committing an additional £4 billion of investment, expected to unlock an additional £12 billion of private sector investment – though note that this is intended to apply across all key sectors covered by the Industrial Strategy, not just Life Sciences.

BBB to publish investment return data from Life Sciences focussed funds, “helping to build a stronger evidence base which, alongside increasing liquidity, can create a virtuous circle of increased investment”.
Skills:

“New Turing AI Pioneer Fellowships will improve AI skills across multiple scientific and research domains, including Life Sciences”.
Manufacturing:

Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund of “up to £520 million in grants” in the UK Life Sciences manufacturing sector, to attract globally mobile manufacturing investments and build sovereign capability.
Net zero:

Continuing to implement the NHS Net Zero Roadmap, including a goal of delivering a circular economy for MedTech by 2045.
High-value partnerships:

Annual target to “secure at least one major strategic partnership annually with leading Life Sciences companies”, with the Office for Life Sciences “ready to enter into substantive discussions with Life Sciences firms with exceptional value propositions that can be delivered through partnership” – i.e. working closely with promising Life Sciences businesses to ensure they stay and grow in the UK.

Dedicated support for Life Sciences SMEs with the intention of supporting “10-20 high-potential UK companies to scale, attract investment, and remain domiciled in the UK.”

Driving Health Innovation and NHS Reform

Recognising that UK public policy has not best supported innovation in the past, the Plan states that “incentives and greater freedoms will be utilised to support, enable, and encourage the NHS to operate more innovatively”. Actions include:

Modernising regulations

Digital transformation:

Delivering MHRA digital transformation “at pace”.
Medical device regulation:

Reforming medical devices regulatory frameworks on an “innovation friendly” basis.
Streamlining international products:

Increased use of “international reliance and recognition routes for medicines and medical devices, to streamline the route to market for products which have previously sough Comparator Regulator approval”.
AI regulation:

Reviewing regulations and frameworks on the application of AI to Life Sciences, though the many statements referring to this currently appear to be statements of intent rather than set actions.
Procurement reform:

Introduce “low-friction procurement” mechanisms for MedTech, including a “Rules Based Pathway” and an NHS “Innovator Passport”, intended to remove duplication of assessment across various local health systems.

Enabling innovation

App integration:

Creation (subject to initial testing) of a “Healthstore” of apps which can offered to patients to help manage or treat conditions, encouraging app-based health solutions and enabling these to be centrally procured by the NHS.
Growth mandate:

Placing a “growth mandate on NHS commercial activity”, to ensure that “promoting innovation is seen as an institutional objective, alongside achieving value for month”.
Innovation zones:

Establishing “Regional Health Innovation Zones for large-scale development and implementation of innovation”, which will be empowered to “experiment with new commissioning models, to redesign patient pathways, and simplify procurement.”
Agency coordination:

Enhancing coordination and information sharing between MHRA and NICE, to include launch of “a fully integrated scientific advice service, accessed through a single point of entry”, with much focus on accelerating new medicines and medical technologies to market.