News
Thursday June 4 2026
National Preparedness Commission
Our chief executive Mark Samuels writes for the National Preparedness Commission on the difficult balance between medicines innovation and resilience.
Innovation Alone Won’t Protect Patients: The Case for Medicines Resilience
“I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others,” wrote Iain Banks in The Bridge.
Are we fooling ourselves into believing that the government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan – which prioritises tomorrow’s potential drugs over today’s medicine supply – will keep the NHS supplied in a volatile world?
In a world of finite taxpayer-funded health budgets, policymakers must balance maintaining today’s services with investing in tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Medicine supply is a classic example of this dilemma: do we protect access to the essential treatments patients rely on today, or prioritise the discovery of the next potential cure?
