100 new discovery projects to receive government funding
- Projects from Aberdeen to Exeter supported by share of £80 million to drive cutting edge discoveries.
- Includes projects developing biomarkers to help prevent blood clots and resultant heart attacks and strokes.
- Science Minister Lord Vallance backs projects which could spark the beginning of a new generation of life-changing developments.
More health lost than gained from NHS spending on new medicines
- A study published in The Lancet has argued that NHS spending on expensive new drugs has come at a significant cost to broader healthcare services.
- Over two decades, £75 billion spent on new drugs provided 3.75 million additional years of full health. However, researchers estimate reallocating funds to existing services, such as earlier disease diagnosis, could have added 5 million years of full health.
- The report criticised the NHS’s cost-effectiveness threshold for enabling high drug prices and called for reform to prioritise cost-effective care.
Bowel cancer rising among under-50s worldwide, research finds
- The number of under-50s being diagnosed with bowel cancer is increasing worldwide, according to research that also reveals rates are rising faster in England than almost any other country.
- For the first time, global data suggests doctors are seeing more young adults develop early-onset bowel cancer, from Europe and North America to Asia and Oceania.
- An increase in rates was reported in 27 of the 50 countries examined, with the greatest annual increases seen in New Zealand (4%), Chile (4%), Puerto Rico (3.8%), and England (3.6%).
£2 billion boost to growth as UK joins major trade group
- UK becomes first European nation to accede to CPTPP, a major trade bloc in the Indo-Pacific which includes countries like Japan, Vietnam, Peru, Chile and Malaysia.
- UK membership grows CPTPP’s GDP to £12 trillion and creates opportunities for businesses, potentially boosting the economy by £2 billion a year in the long run.
New clinical trials framework laid in parliament
- New legislation has been laid in Parliament that will address the research sector’s need for a more efficient, streamlined and adaptable regulatory framework for clinical trials.
- It will make the UK a more attractive place for innovators to conduct important research and will help to get potentially life-changing new treatments to patients and the NHS as quickly as possible.
- This marks an important milestone in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s biggest overhaul of the clinical trial regulations in 20 years, and will support taking trials to the patient.
The Monthly Diagnostics statistics for October 2024 can be found here.
- The total number of patients waiting six weeks or more from referral for one of the 15 key diagnostic tests at the end of October 2024 was 337,200. This was 20.7% of the total number of patients waiting at the end of the month.
- Nationally, the operational standard of less than 1% of patients waiting six weeks or more was not met this month.
- Compared with October 2023 the total number of patients waiting six weeks or more decreased by 56,800 while the proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more decreased by 4.0 percentage points.
- In the last 12 months, the proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more at the end of a month has varied between 20.7% (October 2024) and 26.8% (December 2023).
- The estimated average time that a patient had been waiting for a diagnostic test was 2.7 weeks at the end of October 2024.
- There were 1,630,100 patients waiting for a key diagnostic test at the end of October 2024. This is an increase of 33,800 from October 2023.
- A total of 2,544,800 diagnostic tests were undertaken in October 2024. This is an increase of 232,800 from October 2023.
