The Life Sciences Sector Plan is out, now what?
Just because the sector plan is now out doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance to engage. You should analyse its impact and plan to shape its implementation.
Life Sciences Sector Plan
The UK Government published the Life Sciences Sector Plan on 16 July.
This follows the 'Modern' Industrial Strategy (just incase you were tempted to think it was old fashioned).
My view
In general terms, I feel everyone is getting a bit tired of these strategies, sector plans, industrial policies, sector visions et al. Each tends to be substantially similar to the previous version because (surprise...) the fundamentals are pretty much the same. The country has great assets, great potential but there are some barriers that everyone has known about for a while...lack of investment, burdensome regulation and slow NHS adoption being chief amongst the culprits.
There are some good things in this sector plan. Having a Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) who is responsible for delivery against specific metrics; greater transparency via annual implementation updates; Rules Based Pathways and Innovation Passports; and parallel regulatory approvals are some of the key ones. It diagnoses the most of the problems well and has a clear vision for where it wants to see the UK.
Some potentially great ideas have very low ambitions though. The plan explicitly says "a dedicated support service will be established to help 10–20 high-potential UK companies to scale, attract investment, and remain headquartered in the UK." If this will only seek to help 10-20 companies, there is no way this will be transformative...unless they all achieve £10bn valuations (I get started on this below!). Some individual universities will spin out more high-potential companies than that alone. Also, what powers will it have to provide emergency finance to bridge funding gaps? To push for faster trial approvals? If its role is to provide information and signpost, it might as well pack up now or simply be a footnote initiative rather than one of the 'big hitting' ideas.
Unfortunately this sector plan views success through the prism of zero-sum competition - in doing so, many of the metrics it measure success as the UK vs another European country. While it sounds sexy to stand up in the House of Commons and say 'fastest sector growth in Europe' - as many followers of these things will notice, the results are usually pretty paltry but everyone else is even more paltry, thus making the UK sound successful.
Patients don't much care if the UK is the least slow at rolling out medical innovation into the health service - they care if they can access innovation in a timely way that makes a difference to their own care and outcome. It's disappointing that this plan doesn't set out some goals that we want to achieve as a country, rather than basing success on the relative achievements or failures of other countries.
Similarly, it misunderstands what growth looks like in the sector. By seeking to measure the 'Number of UK Life Sciences companies with a valuation of over £10 billion' it shows ignorance of the life cycle of many companies in the sector. Biotech and early stage DD companies aren't looking to build companies valued at £10bn - they're looking to sell up via an acquisition once human data is positive.
Sometimes this is for several £bn but this metric is ridiculous and also pays no attention to much of the sector's success relying on thousands of medtech SMEs doing good business and exporting, but who don't go for an IPO or break beyond the £100m valuation mark, let alone £10bn. It is sad that it is now common for national success to be reduced to the 'number of unicorns' rather than having a well diversified and healthy SME market who are responsible for most of the existing employment anyway...OK, rant over.
What does it mean for business?
However generic and remote sector plans and industrial strategies can seem, they do matter and so I encourage you to read, analyse and engage with this plan and the industrial strategy.
The impact of the plan on your business will depend on the sub-sector you're in and the stage your business is at. If you're developing an MVP or prototyping, you'll probably just want to get abreast of it. But if you're in health data or analytics for example, you should seek to understand the new HDRS and develop a strategy for how to shape and effectively engage with it as the guidelines and regulatory regime are developed.
I'm yet to find a business that lives and dies by government reports. But I think we can all agree that government action (or inaction) does make a difference on the ground, but sometimes it is only subtle and over the longer term. In other cases, it is immediate and obvious.
I work with clients to help them understand government policy and to influence its development. Many of these are SMEs. They don't have the resources to be able to create public affairs teams but they are interested and engaged when it comes to understanding and influencing their political environment.
Given their resource limitations, when advising them I recommend focusing advocacy efforts on the policies that most directly impact their success in the short term, then scale that down depending on the immediacy and impact of a given policy. The graphic below is a heavily simplified version of this advice for illustrative purposes.
Simplified impact of policies on business
If you haven't already, you should produce an analysis of what this plan means for your business and how you can plan to take advantage of it. Being strategic and doing some scenario planning, as well as integrating key messaging into your investor proposition, is critical if you're running a serious, strategy-led business.
We are doing this right now for clients, so if you want to have a conversation about what this would look like for you, please drop me a message.
How you can shape what comes next
The sector plan was developed with 250 organisations. This is a tiny proportion of the overall sector, which should ram home why it's important to contribute to policy formation. If you had engaged with this, you'd have a had a huge impact relative to your size.
However, although the plan has now been published, it isn't the end of the road when it comes to engagement.
There will be annual implementation updates, which will provide a chance to continually influence the execution of the plan and iteratively improve it. As plans of this kind rarely (ahem) go to plan, these will provide valuable opportunities to feedback and help steer it in the right direction. You should plan for these annual appraisals.
There is a Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) accountable for each of the metrics, making a stakeholder analysis essential if you are to fully get to grips with this. Engage with them directly to help government understand how the landscape is changing and how policy needs to evolve throughout the implementation period.
If you're looking to access the NHS, take a multi-pronged approach to engagement, liaising with government on the policy development for technology rollout, with individual MPs on specific pilots and with NHS leaders on putting policy into practice. Ensuring you are engaging throughout this 'loop' will pay dividends in the long run (hopefully literally when you get it right!).
Concluding thoughts and take-aways
There are some good actions in this plan. I'm particularly interested in reading more of the detail around Rules Based Pathways and Innovation Passports, and in understanding more about how the joint and parallel MHRA/NICE advice will work.
But despite claiming to want to avoid 'warm words', it is a lot of warm words. I don't think it's bold or direct enough but can see this changing as growth remains anaemic and the election looms. Labour have staked their success on economic growth - this shapes everything else.
Many of the policies, actions and metrics are vague. This is a shame but provides good opportunities for companies to help government to evolve and shape the implementation - they are deliberately providing space to enable changes to be made.
Companies should commission a policy analysis to understand what they should do next, how they can take advantage of this plan and do some scenario planning. They should also put a plan in place to regularly engage with policies and actions that are not yet fully developed, especially around NHS procurement and regulatory changes.
If you're not being briefed on the political opportunities and risks in your sector, you're missing critical information that should be shaping your decisions around investment, hiring, expansion and more. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you to understand, navigate and influence.
