Drug companies should get easier access to NHS patient data, GlaxoSmithKline’s boss has claimed.
Dame Emma Walmsley urged Rishi Sunak to ‘keep pushing’ his team to ‘do more’ — arguing that handing over anonymised files of millions of Brits would ‘prevent and treat disease more effectively’.
Such data, although stripped of any identifying details, would include patient diagnoses, symptoms they’ve experienced, test results, medications taken, as well as information on physical, mental and sexual health.
Pharmaceutical firms see patient records as a treasure trove, allowing them to see hidden patterns that could open up new avenues.
For instance, it could offer insight on the benefit of certain drugs and how they work in routine clinical practice.
Dame Emma Walmsley urged Rishi Sunak to ‘keep pushing’ his team to ‘do more’ — arguing that handing over anonymized files of millions of Brits would ‘prevent and treat disease more effectively’
Mr Sunak praised Dame Emma’s ‘great point about datasets’ at yesterday’s Business Connect conference, which featured around 200 high-profile chief executives and business leaders
Speaking at a conference in London yesterday, where the PM took questions from business leaders, Dame Emma said: ‘The power of the UK is unique datasets which can really transform research and development and, most importantly, healthcare outcomes.
‘We hope you keep pushing your teams to do more here.’
Dame Emma, chief executive of GSK, added it would help them ‘prevent and treat disease more effectively, relieve some burden on the NHS as well and government budgets’.
Mr Sunak praised Dame Emma’s ‘great point about datasets’ at yesterday’s Business Connect conference, which featured around 200 high-profile chief executives and business leaders.
He said: ‘You’re absolutely right about the power of innovation. That is the way that we drive growth in a modern economy.
‘We need to make sure that in your industry, for example, this is the country where companies want to come and do drug discovery, where it’s easy to research to find the drugs that are going to keep us safe and healthy in the future.’
But campaigners have repeatedly voiced concerns about any talks of opening up NHS data with drug firms.
Critics argue there is a appropriate safeguards in place to protect data from ending up in the wrong hands and little transparency about what happens to data after it is shared.
Others have warned patients can still be identified through anonymous data.
Campaigners have also queried the true goal of allowing pharmaceutical firms access to records, claiming it could help them boost profits.
Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at ESET Internet Security, told MailOnline today: ‘Granting the openness to private data comes with the challenge of who is allowed access which attracts threats actors ranging from wannabe hackers to nation state attackers.’
He added: ‘The balance between progress and a right to privacy is incredibly difficult but made more challenging when comments are made that do not fully understand the potential knock on effects of giving access up private data.
‘Similar to the encrypted communication debate with government, when we offer access to sensitive data, albeit via one channel, it will inevitably be abused and therefore there would be far bigger problems to overcome.’
NHS patient data contains information on the health of everyone in Britain over the past 70 years.
But some NHS data can already be shared with ‘other organisations’, if it is ‘necessary and proportionate’, according to NHS England.
In recent years companies including management consultancies and pharmaceutical groups have also bought anonymous patient records.
But organisations must abide by a tough set of rules which include licenses to buy data costing up to £363,000 for ‘full-access’.
GSK played a key role in the UK’s war on Covid, developing jabs and antivirals. Making billions of pounds in the process, it lies at the forefront of Britain’s world-leading life sciences industry, seen as a key growth area after Brexit
These licenses are issued by the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, run by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which polices the safety of medicines used in Britain.
Patients also have the right to request that their confidential information is not used beyond their own treatment.
In 2021 plans to allow an NHS system to extract patient data from GP surgeries in England and make them available to third parties provoked fury from patients over concerns around privacy.
But it marked part of a wider drive to digitalize the NHS and ‘harness the potential of data in health and care’, under plans initially put forward by former health secretary Matt Hancock.
GSK played a key role in the UK’s war on Covid, developing jabs and antivirals.
Making billions of pounds in the process, it lies at the forefront of Britain’s world-leading life sciences industry, seen as a key growth area after Brexit.
Elsewhere during the conference yesterday, Mr Sunak unveiled a £100million fund to help develop a ‘safe’ form of artificial intelligence in the UK.
The Prime Minister said that AI models such as ChatGPT had the potential to create ‘enormous opportunities to grow our economy, create better, well-paid jobs and build a better future through advances in healthcare and security’.
Business leaders also accused him of scoring a ‘spectacular own goal’ for introducing the ‘perverse’ tourist tax levy.
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