Science and Technology Committee

2 June 2026

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Science and Technology Committee Tue, 2 Jun 2026 House of Lords

00:01 - 01:26

Speaker 5

Good morning. Welcome to this health this select committee on science and technology where we're investigating personalized medicine, AI, and and the impact and potential for the NHS. And we're very pleased to welcome our two witnesses, Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford, chair of the Health Data Research Service, and her colleague, doctor Melanie Iverson, who's the CEO of the health data research service. So I would like to start. I think my first question is probably for Baroness Blackwood, and then the next part for doctor Iverson.

So, barroness Blackwood, when you're introducing yourself, perhaps you could then say to tell us what you feel that with the health data research service still in the process of being set up, it was set up fairly recently, perhaps you could set out for us your vision for it. What will its core functions be, and what are your priorities over the next year? And and when the HDRS is fully operational, what will researchers or companies be able to do with UK health data that they cannot do today? So with that, would you like to introduce yourself and and to start?

01:26 - 02:52

Speaker 2

Thank you, lord mayor. And, I would like to also declare my interests as set out in the register. In addition to being chair of HDRS, I chair Genomics England, which I know you've already heard from in this inquiry. And I'm a member of the board at BioNTech and RTW Opportunities Fund, which are sort of a little bit more distant but relevant. So thank you for the question.

This is a hugely exciting moment, think, for, innovation in health care. It is now too slow in The UK to set up clinical trials and drive innovation and new therapies and technologies for patient benefit and the improvement of the NHS and wider societal benefit. So HDRS has been set up with a clear mission, which is to unite The UK's fragmented health data, which we are all familiar with. We are intending to act as a single front door for health data for research, streamline and accelerate data access, unlock data enabled clinical trials, support regulators, and accelerate risk proportionate regulatory approvals, and also support post market surveillance. With these key priorities, we believe The UK will become a better place to do clinical trials, but also will improve the health and, life expectancy that we see in the public.

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