The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced plans to launch a new AI sandbox to expedite the development of medicines and improve safety.
The programme will investigate the ways in which AI can enhance the evaluation of precision and safety, better forecast risks, and identify impacts that current methods might overlook.
UK Science Minister Lord Vallance unveiled the scheme during London Tech Week and aims to create a controlled environment where companies and researchers can work with regulators to explore AI-driven methods for understanding the safety of medicines and predicting any side effects.
Each year, adverse drug reactions result in around 250,000 hospital admissions in the UK, costing the National Health Service (NHS) over £2bn ($2.67bn).
Additionally, approximately 90% of medicines fail at the time of development, partly because current methods cannot always predict how drugs will perform in patients.
The new MHRA sandbox will allow innovators to test AI systems and assess the behaviour of medicines within the body.
Funding for the programme comes from the UK Government’s Regulatory Innovation Office. The initial phase is expected to include up to five AI-driven approaches.
The agency will collaborate with the industry and academic groups from summer 2026 to define the sandbox’s operational details.
The objectives include examining how AI might improve predictions about drug absorption, processing, and potential harm, as well as enhancing assessment by using clinical data from groups often underrepresented in clinical studies, such as children, older adults, and people from diverse backgrounds.
The MHRA intends to use findings from the sandbox to evaluate the reliability of AI tools in making decisions about new medicines’ safety.
Improving evidence and clarifying expectations for safe AI usage are expected to encourage investment in UK healthcare innovation.
The initiative forms part of broader efforts to modernise medicine development, with a focus on advanced modelling and synthetic data.
UK Health Innovation Minister Preet Gill said: “The AI revolution is here, and we want our NHS staff to be the first in the queue, armed with rigorously tested clinical AI tools.
“By giving innovators a safe space to test these tools alongside regulators, we can build the evidence base needed to get safer, more effective treatments to patients faster. That means fewer adverse reactions, less reliance on animal testing, and a smarter, more efficient medicines development process.
“Through our 10 Year Health Plan, we are driving the NHS to be the most AI-enabled healthcare system in the world.”
In March 2026, the MHRA and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence made their decisions on new drugs concurrently, following changes to the UK's medicine regulation process.
