Research undertaken by the NIHR’s Horizon Scanning Centre has found that the widely held belief that the UK supply of innovative new medicines has  dwindled in recent decades, is not borne out by the evidence. Researchers found the number of drugs introduced during the last 30 years had in fact increased slightly. The study published in the BMJ Open journal analysing data in the British National Formulary guide on drugs, to see how many new medicines were added between 1971 and 2011. Although there were steep peaks and troughs over this period, including a dip between 1998 and 2006, overall there have been 0.16 more drugs being produced every year than there were in the 1970s.