Cameron wants health firms to see patient data

The Prime Minister is to insist “opening up” the health service can make it a “huge magnet” for innovation and drive growth.

Closer collaboration with life science companies could mean giving them more freedom to run clinical trials inside hospitals, as well as access to anonymised patient records.

However, the idea has already encountered strong opposition from privacy campaigners, while Labour has warned of NHS privatisation by the back door.

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: “We will not allow David Cameron to throw away essential safeguards in his desperation to develop a credible industrial strategy.”

Joyce Robbins, of Patient Concern, said many people would be “deeply disturbed” by the notion that their private medical records could be handed to firms seeking new markets.

“This data is absolutely private; it is not the Government’s to give,” she told the Sunday Telegraph.

Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said: “It is for patients, not the Government, to decide what happens with their medical information.

“It appears that commercial interests are being put ahead of patient privacy and that is unacceptable.”

Amid fears that Britain could slip back into recession, Mr Cameron will use a keynote speech in London to warn that life sciences in Britain are “at a crossroads”.

He will hail the country’s “great history”, including DNA breakthroughs, the first test-tube baby, and 34 Nobel Prizes in medicine.

“We can be proud of our past, but we cannot be complacent about our future. The industry is changing; not just year by year, but month by month.

“Pressure on healthcare budgets in the West, emerging economies in the East, an ageing population, an explosion of knowledge – all creating a new paradigm for life sciences.

“And in this new paradigm, we must ensure that the UK stays ahead. Because yes, we’ve got a leading science base; yes, we’ve got four of the world’s top 10 universities; and yes, we have a National Health Service unlike any other.

“But my argument today is that these strengths alone are not enough, that to keep pace with what’s happening we’ve got to change radically – the way we innovate, the way we collaborate, the way we open up the NHS.”

The Prime Minister will say the coalition’s key strategy is “opening up the NHS to new ideas”.

“The end-game is for the NHS to be working hand-in-glove with industry as the fastest adopter of new ideas in the world, acting as a huge magnet to pull new innovations through, right along the food-chain – from the labs to the boardrooms to the hospital bed,” he will add.

Publishing reports on life sciences by the Business, Innovation and Skills Department and NHS chief executive David Nicholson, Mr Cameron will announce a £180m catalyst fund to help commercialise medical breakthroughs.

The Government is also consulting on an “early access scheme” to put new drugs and technologies in NHS hospitals more quickly. Patients could get access to treatments for conditions such as brain and lung cancer a year earlier.

Ministers believe Britain is well placed to become a world leader in life sciences because of the strength of scientific research at its top universities and the mass of expertise in the NHS.

The industry employs more than 160,000 people in 4,500 companies, and has an annual turnover of £50bn.

Other Government-held data, such as the Met Office’s weather records and the most detailed Ordnance Survey mapping, is also being opened up under these proposals.