The joint report by Sir Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, and Lord William Hague, a former leader of the Conservatives, envisages the new organisation as being owned and controlled by the NHS in collaboration with trusted external partners. It would supply anonymised data to research bodies, including biotech companies, in return for financial profit that would then be reinvested in the health service.

The report emphasises that the safety of data would be ensured by a transparent governance model and that the Trust’s operations would align with public health objectives, not the goals of private capital. This framework would enable personalised AI doctors to support healthcare professionals in delivering more cost-effective and timely treatment, it adds.

The report is the third in the Tony Blair Institute’s ‘New National Purpose’ series. The first, published in February last year, put forward a future for Britain in which technology transforms everything from how government works to how public services are delivered. The second report focused on practical solutions, showing how the country might use artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve that vision.

Shining the spotlight on biotechnology, the third report, ‘A New National Purpose: Leading the biotech revolution’, highlights several critical areas for Britain, including:

• how it can seize the global opportunity that biotech represents in the AI era;
• how data can be harnessed better to drive research and help create AI doctors that can complement GPs’ expertise by acting as personalised health advisors;
• what the country should do to become home to the next generation of ‘superstar’ companies; and
• how to keep Britain and the rest of the world safe from global biothreats.

The common thread throughout is: what does “reimagining the state” look like for biotechnology and the opportunity it presents? The proposed NHS Data Trust is key to answering that question, with the report arguing for the establishment of new institutions to secure Britain’s place at the cutting edge of biotech invention, putting its national health data to work, protecting the country and others from biothreats, and more.

In addition to the NHS Data Trust, other new institutions proposed include the UK Laboratory of Biodesign and the MediMind laboratory network. The former would use experimental and computational methods to design, build and test new biotechnologies, biomolecules and therapeutics.

The latter organisation would work to establish personalised AI doctors, in partnership with industry and the NHS, to help doctors treat people in a way that is cost-effective and relieving the pressure on the NHS. The report envisions AI doctors being able to find connections between disparate sets of data that might escape humans, in order to advance individual and collective health. These AI doctors will complement and assist, not replace, human doctors, it confirms.

Shift in mindset

The report also presents how the Government can shift its mindset to how it can make the UK a place where high-potential companies can grow and become global leaders.

Noting that the global biotech sector is already worth more than $6 trillion, with companies in the United States responsible for over half of that total, the report argues that the UK needs to build trillion-dollar biotech companies at home. This, it says, will require “a more vibrant ecosystem and expertise, in which emerging managers, solo GPs, and operators running funds can increase the competitiveness and depth of capital in the UK, setting spinout terms that incentivise and reward entrepreneurs, as well as reforming pension funds and capital markets”.

In addition, there is a need to pioneer 21st-century biosecurity to keep Britain and the rest of the world safe from biotech accidents and bad actors. To this end, the UK should set up a UK Biosecurity Taskforce to learn from Covid-19 and develop practical plans for biosecure societies.

If a positive biotech-driven future that improves people’s lives and the country’s prosperity is to be realised, a reimagined state will need to lead, says the report – one that can capitalise on research, enable infrastructure, and nurture talent through well-planned investments and public-private partnership. This, the report adds, requires interdisciplinary thinking and foundational realignment of priorities across research, data, financing and more.

These are the ingredients by which Britain can cement its role in shaping accountability in biotechnology, the report concludes.