Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the level of use of point of care or at home diagnostic testing in decentralising clinical trials.

We are unable to provide information on the level of use of point of care or at home testing in decentralised clinical trials as the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network does not routinely categorise data on methods used in decentralised trials.

The pandemic sped up the evolution of clinical trial delivery in the United Kingdom to take trial activities to patients, rather than the traditional model of bringing patients to a trial site. In March 2021 the Government published ‘Saving and Improving Lives: The Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery’ setting out ambitions to reform clinical research delivery in the UK. The Phase 2 Implementation Plan, published in June 2022, sets out the plans to expand innovative delivery models, including decentralised trials, building on successes of methods used during COVID-19. This includes supporting and enabling an increase in decentralised study designs and research taking place in primary care and community settings.