Reforms needed for oversight of new tech, says Wellcome

Regulatory oversight of emerging technologies needs to be dynamic if the UK wants to become a world leader in this area, the Wellcome Trust has said.

In a report released on 21 March, the charity lays out the changes that the UK government needs to make if it wants to lead the way in the regulation of emerging technologies such as Crispr genome editing and artificial intelligence.

“The UK must redefine its approach to the oversight of emerging science and technology: moving from being inconsistent and sometimes sluggish, to become dynamic,” said the report’s author Joseph Clift, a policy adviser at Wellcome in the report.