Government celebrates hitting clinical trials target
The average set-up time for commercial clinical trials in the UK dropped to 100 days in the first quarter of 2026. The Department of Health and Social Care has heralded the new data as “yet another milestone in the UK’s life sciences growth.”
All commercial trials set up in this period (24) were set up within 150 days, which meets the ambition set in last year’s Life Sciences Plan.
Key performance indicator data also shows strong performance in the second target area, with 100 per cent of studies which received combined MHRA and research ethics committee approval doing so within 60 days in September 2026. Two other KPIs remain short of the government’s target: the proportion of studies recruiting their first participant within 30 days of opening to recruitment, and the proportion of studies opening to recruitment within 60 days of Health Research Authority (HRA) approval letter or equivalent.
This chart gives an overview of the KPIs against their targets, as well as a closer look at progress with set-up times since the target was announced:
There are two additional key performance indicators for which targets are not currently set. One is the average monthly recruitment to clinical studies, which stood at 78,271 in July 2026 (somewhat above the pre-pandemic baseline), and the number of new studies added to the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) research delivery network portfolio.
The health department says that its reforms, including the NIHR Industry Hub, are designed to make the UK a “faster, more efficient and more predictable place to run commercial clinical research”:
“Faster set-up is one part of that story: the wider goal is stronger recruitment, reliable whole-study delivery and greater confidence among global sponsors choosing where to place research.”
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has recently unveiled its 2030 strategy, which commits to supporting the government’s ambition for the UK to attain third place globally for phase one clinical trials by 2030. This will achieved in part through the use of AI to help with documentation review, and by supporting a shift away from animal testing models.
Earlier this year the government also announced a target for drug discovery ahead of clinical trials – the first (and so far only) mission in the AI for Science Strategy was to “accelerate drug discovery to develop trial-ready drugs within 100 days by 2030.”
The use of artificial intelligence is expected to “drastically shorten” the timelines involved in developing new treatments in the preclinical phase – and the strategy also raised the possibility of performing what it termed “in silico” trials in which humans are not needed, further compressing development time.