Regulation as an Enabler of Innovation: A Regional Perspective

At the MHRA, our role is to give patients and the public confidence in the safety, effectiveness and quality of emerging health technologies. Innovation and regulation work best together—enabling new solutions to be adopted quickly while upholding the highest standards of protection and trust.

As outlined by Richard Stubbs in the next of our blog series, artificial intelligence shows both the immense opportunity and the need for responsible oversight. AI can transform care, but only when developed with rigour, transparency and fairness. Crucially, this means ensuring that AI training datasets are truly representative of the populations these tools will serve. Without this, technologies risk entrenching inequalities rather than reducing them. Regulation has a vital role in setting the standards that safeguard equity and protect patients.

Richard Stubbs is the Chief Executive of Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber and a member of the MHRA’s National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare. Richard brings extensive experience in bringing together the NHS, industry, academia and government to accelerate the adoption of innovation that improves patient care, addresses health inequalities and strengthens regional and national innovation ecosystems.

Guest Blog: Richard Stubbs

Working at the intersection of health, innovation and place, bringing together NHS organisations, industry, academia and government to accelerate the adoption of technologies that improve patient care, one lesson has been consistent: innovation does not succeed in isolation. Innovation is a team sport. It depends on systems that give innovators confidence, clinicians assurance, and patients trust. Effective regulation is central to that system.

There is a tendency to frame regulation as a brake on innovation. In practice, good regulation does the opposite. By setting clear standards, providing proportionate oversight and adapting to emerging technologies, regulators create the conditions in which innovation can be developed, tested and adopted at pace. Nowhere is this more important than in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence, and specifically within healthcare.  As the Health Secretary said earlier this month[i], “moving too slowly” in the shift from analogue to digital in the NHS risks “locking inefficiency into the system while demand continues to rise”.

AI has enormous potential to improve patient outcomes, support the workforce and drive productivity across health and care. But that potential will only be realised if these technologies are safe, effective and equitable. This is why the work of the National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare is so important. As a member of that commission, I am privileged to be supporting a generationally important discussion on the ethical, legal and technical requirements of embedding AI into our healthcare system.