Patients are to be given the right to be told about clinical trials in a move aimed at making the UK’s National Health Service a more attractive place for drugmakers and biotechs to do research, The Financial Times reports, adding that the aim is also to improve patient access to innovative meds.

The move will be announced today by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as part of a package of measures aimed at boosting medical research, innovation and faster use of new treatments.

Other initiatives include creating five to 10 academic health science centers combining university medical research departments with teaching hospitals. Some leading doctors, including the health minister, believe such a move helps account for the pre-eminence of the US in both medical research and the rapid uptake of new treatments.

The idea of giving patients a formal right to be informed of clinical trials from which they might benefit moves beyond the current position where registers of clinical trials are available. But the right to be informed may depend on the deployment of the NHS’s electronic patient record, running four years late, the FT writes.

Pfizer pulled out of four planned clinical trials in the UK, including one for a cancer drug: it could not find enough patients receiving the current “gold standard” treatment to make the trials possible, the FT adds.