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The Chief Scientist Office Festive Message
Euan Dick, Head of Chief Scientist Office (CSO), Scottish Government
As 2025 draws to a close and we start to look to the fresh opportunities that a new year brings, it is a good time to reflect on all that has been achieved thanks to the collaboration and sustained hard work seen across our community.
As the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework 2025-2035 notes, “Embedding health research and innovation throughout the NHS, supporting our dedicated research and innovation professionals, and working in collaboration with the academic and life sciences sector are fundamental to transforming our NHS”.
The framework also sets out the core principles underlying Scotland’s vision for a modern, sustainable health and care system including responsive care designed around people’s individual needs rather than the ‘system’ or 'services'. In that sense, the person becomes an empowered partner in their own care, delivered increasingly in the community and through digital enablement.
The Service Renewal Framework, alongside Scotland’s Population Health Framework, clearly sets out the importance of tackling the wider societal impacts of ill health by focussing on prevention as well as treatment.
Earlier this year, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Professor Gregor Smith noted in announcing his Annual Report that “there is a need for us to make greater in-roads into the prevention of disease”.
In order to realise that shift, we must leverage all skills and experiences that we can, no matter whether they lie in Scotland’s NHS, industry, or academia.
Our community has so much knowledge at its fingertips, but collaboratively breaking down those multidisciplinary walls is crucial to further progress in co-developing and testing solutions.
It is also critical to identifying and realising the world-leading innovation that can be transformative for Scotland.
In 2003, Scotland was the first UK nation to publish ‘A Common Understanding’ which set out a framework for cooperation between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry with the aim of achieving “the best outcomes from collaborative working”.
The refreshed 2025 guidance reflects the CSO belief that our research, development, and innovation efforts cannot stand still; that together we must work hard to reach out and build connections, helping to accelerate advances in science and technology, in turn improving patient outcomes, and strengthening national growth.
I see much of this being achieved already by our hard-working Scottish community. We are all coming together to make things better and I am certain there is so much more to come when we pool knowledge and insight.
Collaboration was also an important theme running through Scotland’s Health Research and Innovation Conference, held recently at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
I was pleased to have the opportunity of co-chairing a plenary session including a panel discussion specifically introducing Scotland’s Commercial Research Delivery Centre (CRDC) Network.
While the initiative is young, the aim to enhance speed and efficiency of commercial clinical research delivery and boost the global competitiveness of our life sciences sector is an exciting one with Scotland’s four centres — across NHS Grampian, NHS Tayside, NHS Lothian, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde — set to make a significant contribution.
A great deal of work has been done to put Scotland’s new infrastructure in place, and we should be proud of what’s been achieved so far with our CRDCs representing the culmination of a strong collective push across the country.
Indeed, the CRDCs are part of the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicine Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG) Investment Programme, overseen by CSO and the NHS Research Scotland (NRS) Management Board, and coordinated nationally through the NRS Central Management Team — a great example of a collective vision being realised.
The importance of VPAG is clear, offering crucial investment into establishing a ‘hub and spoke’ network for cutting-edge research and fantastic opportunities for people in Scotland to gain access to trials in more equitable settings. In turn, this means local research and innovation being enhanced and the research community being empowered to try new approaches.
However, with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) recently reporting that UK-wide patient participation in industry-sponsored trials has fallen between 2022/23 and 2024/25, Scotland must play its part and contribute to reversing this trend.
There have been many notable research success stories for Scotland across 2025, both commercial and non-commercial in nature.
Only last month, it was announced that an important and innovative clinical trial had been set up to test whether vaccination against a common virus found in almost all people with multiple sclerosis (MS) could help treat the condition.
Led by the University of Edinburgh, the Horizon trial involves up to 10 sites across the UK and is sponsored by pharmaceutical company Moderna.
It is being supported by NHS Research Scotland (NRS), the UK Vaccine Innovation Pathway, and the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), who are working together to accelerate vaccine trials in the UK.
Underpinned by Scottish leadership, the partnership has enabled the UK to be the first country outside the US to open the study, affording more patients the choice to participate in the trial, and the potential for a significant breakthrough.
It would be remiss of me to not reference at least a few more of the many individual studies and successes throughout the year including:
- The University of Dundee and NHS Tayside successfully recruiting the first patient in the UK to a clinical trial that aims to improve treatments for a sub-group of patients affected by an aggressive blood cancer
- The NRS Neuroprogressive and Dementia Network (NDN) telling of its success in studying the effects of a new drug on Multi System Atrophy (MSA) after the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow was chosen as one of just four UK sites looking into a treatment for slowing the rapidly progressive disease
- A pioneering study looking into how best to engage research participants through patient and public involvement (PPI) activity being published following an event led by the NRS Cardiovascular Clinical Network which also established a national PPI group
- An important trial looking at management of patients with stable chest pain seeing 10-year outcomes published earlier this year. The Scottish Computed Tomography of the Heart (SCOT-HEART) trial — originally funded by CSO — found that management guided by coronary CT angiography (CCTA) is associated with a beneficial long-term impact on patient care
- NHS Education Scotland (NES) and CSO recently announcing that the next round of their joint lectureship scheme is open for applications
This small snapshot of successes underlines the fact that our efforts as a community remain vital to supporting collective health and social care transformation.
On behalf of CSO and the NRS Management Board, I want to thank you for your continued dedication and invaluable contributions.
We wish you a happy, healthy festive season and look forward to achieving more with you in 2026.
Publication date: 18th December 2025
