Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Kakkar

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as professor of surgery at University College London. I also support the amendment very strongly. It comes to the very heart of innovation and sharing the results of that innovation openly, whether they are negative or positive. Therefore, the register needs to be obligatory, in which all innovation and the outcome of that innovation is properly reported. It would do much to ensure the development of an enhanced culture of innovation, but also, fundamentally, to provide very important protections.

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, as far as patient safety is concerned, it is clear that there is a need to keep a record so that other patients do not receive a misguided innovative treatment following an unsuccessful one. That is very important.

Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Kakkar

Friday 24th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, I have some concerns about the wording of Amendment 6. Is it intended, for instance, to restrict the use of an agent or intervention that has been tested in a completely different situation—there may be some peer-review publication or some clinical validation in a completely different situation—but where it is proposed to use the treatment for another condition? One will recall that Gleevec was an agent developed principally for the management of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia; it was an interesting biological compound that targeted a specific mutation in a signalling pathway in cells in that form of leukaemia. Many years later, it was noticed that that signalling pathway mutation was also seen in a particularly rare form of tumour, a gastrointestinal stromal tumour. Those who were innovating decided to use the drug because the genetic mutation appeared to be the same for treating that particular type of tumour to great effect. Would the description of innovation in the amendment have prevented that happening?

Proposed new paragraph (d) of the amendment deals with the question of devices or instruments. What happens if they have been developed and regulated for a particular intervention, and then an innovator decides to use them for a completely different condition? They will have been made available for regulated use but not for the condition in question. Would this amendment therefore restrict that type of innovation?

[Lord Winston]

I do not think that it restricts anything at all but actually makes the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, workable. We need some kind of definition of what an innovation is. That is all the amendment tries to achieve. It is not in any way restrictive. Of course, if one decides to put a plastic tube that is normally used to infiltrate the trachea into another organ, this amendment will permit that to happen, when currently it would not be allowed.