Over the past 16 months, under the weight of a global pandemic, scientists and medical professionals have had to rethink the way they do things.

There must be lessons we can learn from this experience.

That's the topic of this special episode for the Spectators podcast, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Novartis.

I'm Kate Andrews, and I'm delighted to be joined by a panel of expert guests.

Chimney Bott, managing director in the UK for Novartis.

Professor Paul Martin, a sociologist tasked with finding better ways to collaborate between the medical sector and other sectors,

and Nicole Mathur, the life sciences lead at the technology company IBM, who have been crucial in the UK's pandemic response.

There's a lot to talk about, and today I want to discuss everything from repurposing drugs to cutting red tape.

But Nicole, to start, you worked on the UK's recovery trial, a program which looked at how

existing drugs can help treat COVID-19.

Listeners may remember this.

I'm absolutely delighted that the biggest breakthrough yet has been made by a fantastic team of scientists right here in the UK.

The research led by a team of scientists at Oxford University shows the dexamethazone, a familiar

steroid that's been in use for 60 years, can be remarkably effective. The drug cuts the risk

of death by a third for patients on ventilators

and by a fifth for those requiring oxygen. Can you tell us about what you did on that project

and what's been learned from it? Yeah, absolutely. So we were part of the Digital Trial's Consortium

and we provided the data services to the recovery trial. And in setting up the recovery trial,

we aimed to make it really simple so that it didn't take a long time for doctors to

onboard patients and to get it through the regulatory processes really quickly. We also then

use the digital trials data services, the data that was ordinarily collected through the NHS,

so that doctors didn't have to record

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