MHRA launches 2024/25 business plan with focus on enabling access to groundbreaking new technology while optimising delivery for all who need our services

7th October 2024

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has today launched its ambitious new business plan for 2024/25, setting out the agency's core focus of enabling access to innovative healthcare products. This while ensuring delivery for all who need its services - patients and the public, healthcare professionals, researchers and developers.

As an Executive Agency of the Department of Health and Social Care, the MHRA have an important role in the delivery of the Government's priorities to ensure people live healthier and longer lives, including its mission to build an NHS fit for the future, driving innovation in the life sciences, and accelerating regulatory approval.

The Agency’s core mission remains unchanged - to protect and promote public health by ensuring that healthcare products, used every day by millions of people in the UK, work and are acceptably safe. We put patients at the heart of everything we do, and increasingly involve patients in our decision-making.

Building on progress since the launch of our 3-year corporate plan in 2023, the targets we have been delivering against since 1 April 2024 involve making significant improvements to ensure high quality and sustainable regulatory and scientific services that operate to predictable timescales.

The Business Plan also reflects the exciting developments in regulatory science, which inform the Agency’s plan to create a UK network of Centres of Excellence in Regulatory Science.

Dr June Raine, Chief Executive of the MHRA, said, "To take full advantage of today’s exciting developments in science and technology for the benefit of patients, we will focus on facilitating access to innovative new products while also ensuring continued access to well-established healthcare products that are the backbone of NHS healthcare.

We will continue to invest in our talented staff by creating satisfying roles and careers, implement an exciting and robust talent management programme, promote diversity and inclusivity and continue to grow as an organisation where every individual can reach their full potential and deliver excellent performance.

For us to deliver these outcomes who use our services, we have built our latest plan around four strategic priorities:

Maintain public trust through transparency and proactive communication, including working to address health inequalities
Enable healthcare access to safe and effective medical products
Deliver scientific and regulatory excellence through strategic partnerships
Become an agency where people flourish alongside a responsive customer service culture
Underpinning the agency’s service optimisation will be our two new regulatory IT systems, SafetyConnect and RegulatoryConnect. SafetyConnect will ensure we continue to respond effectively to new safety signals throughout the product lifecycle, while RegulatoryConnect will modernise our existing management systems and support state-of-the-art interactions with stakeholders.

Delivering on these priorities will also fuel UK Life Sciences growth and contribute to the UK’s pandemic preparedness, underscoring our commitment to national resilience. The agency will continue to operate financial sustainability and support work towards net Zero and environmental sustainability in the healthcare products industry.