IMDRF 2023

As the Chief Healthcare Quality and Access Office in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Laura’s principle role is overseeing a large portfolio designed to ensure the quality and access of products to the UK market - this includes scientific advice, licensing assessment, marketing authorisations and device registrations and regulations, inspections, enforcement and standard setting through for example the British Pharmacopoeia and Target Product Profiles. Since August, Laura has stepped aside from that role for an 18 month period, to focus solely on delivering the programme of reform of the UK Medical Devices regulatory framework.

Laura joined the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in 2021, from the Department of Health and Social Care, where she worked extensively on the COVID-19 vaccine deployment programme. Laura started her career as a post-doctoral research assistant looking at resistance to anti-malarial drugs at the Liverpool Institute of Tropical Medicine following her PhD and BSc in Biochemistry and Physiology. She has spent most of her career as a Civil Servant. After many years in operational work Laura moved into government policy in 2014. In parallel, she went back to university, gaining an Executive Master’s degree in Public Policy from the London School of Economics. Laura has extensive experience of regulatory and organisational transformation through her wider policy and operational work in other major government departments.