The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has followed through on plans to roll out regional 'sandboxes' for NHS innovations, to operate alongside its centralised initiatives, via a partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT).
MHRA's first two centralised programmes are focusing on software or AI used as a medical device (SaMD/AIaMD) and the use of AI for modernising medicines development and safety, respectively, and are being overseen by the MHRA from its London headquarters in Canary Wharf.
They have now been joined by the Manchester Sandbox, which will deploy and test new technologies in an NHS setting, generating evidence on how they perform with patients and clinicians in day-to-day practice.
One of the key goals of the expansion into regional hubs is to build a unified, UK-wide regulatory support network for new technologies that will help to ensure that access to them is available equitably and as quickly as possible across the entire country.
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