Call to improve health research to benefit those with private medical cover?

Those with private medical cover and other UK patients could benefit from medical advances if health research is better regulated, it has been suggested.

The Academy of Medical Sciences has called for the creation of a new body to help boost clinical research in the UK, which it says is currently floundering.

It blames excess red tape for making obtaining necessary approvals and meeting all the regulations of a trial too costly and time-consuming.

This, it says, has led to the UK's worldwide share of clinical trials dropping in recent years thus delaying medical advancement.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, who wrote the report, said: "The current system of regulation is making it increasingly difficult to initiate health research.

"We have found unequivocal evidence that health research in this country is being jeopardised by a regulatory framework that has become unnecessarily complex and burdensome."

It suggests that a single body should be created to handle all medical research regulation. 

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