Prioritising Early Childhood: Academy of Medical Sciences Report

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I totally agree. Funnily enough, I was talking to Minister Leadsom about this subject just this morning. It is complex, because all parents need proxy access so that they can get those digital records for their children automatically. It is something we are working towards. The Pharmacy First initiative, whereby you can write data from a pharmacist immediately into GP records, will help because it will give a road map to do that for children and babies from hospital. It is something we are working on, and I will give details of the timeline in writing.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest. I am a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, which produced this seminal report addressing issues related to child health. I will pick up two points that the Minister might comment on. Although he is implementing what we already know from research works in improving children’s health, we have no strategy for the implementation of good practice. My second point is about research into the early years. Diseases that people may develop later in life can occur as a result of epigenetic influences during the early years that alter the genome, yet research into childhood accounts for 5% of total government research funding.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I totally agree about the importance of research and data. We have spent about £580 million on research in the children and young persons’ space since 2020. As per the earlier question, data is vital to this. I saw a fascinating example just a couple of weeks ago in the Cambridge Research Centre concerning young children. It is using data to construct what it calls “virtual children”, to look at rare diseases, how they progress and different treatments that can be tried. It is truly revolutionary and something I totally support.