Give doctors financial incentives to take part in clinical trials, review recommends

Doctors, nurses, and NHS organisations should be offered financial incentives to take part in clinical research, a government commissioned review has recommended.1

The government should aim to double the number of people taking part in commercial clinical trials in the next two years and double it again by 2027, advises the review, conducted by the former health minister James O’Shaughnessy.

The review sets out 27 recommendations to cut bureaucracy and make the UK a more attractive place for the drug industry to run trials. The government welcomed all recommendations in principle and “as a first step” made five headline commitments backed by £121m, comprising new and existing funding, to speed up clinical trials and improve access to real time data.2

The funding was announced on 25 May by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, as part of a £650m package of measures for the UK’s life science sector. These include an upgrade of the UK Biobank, a plan to relaunch the Academic Health Science Network as Health Innovation Networks, and a new railway line to improve connections between Oxford and Cambridge.

O’Shaughnessy’s review highlights successes such as covid vaccine and therapeutic trials and the UK’s continued strong performance in recruiting patients to …