The new head of the pharmaceutical industry in Scotland says the country is not moving forward fast enough on life sciences and pointed to the refusal to give patients some of the latest treatments as one of the problems holding the country back.

Andy Powrie-Smith, who took over as director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Scotland this summer, said failing to give sufferers new drugs for treatments such as cancer deterred global companies from investing and trialling new medicines in Scotland.

This, he said, disadvantaged patients as well as the economy, saying: "All the evidence suggests that in sites around the world that have strong clinical research there are better outcomes for patients."

Mr Powrie-Smith, who was previously head of a charity, spoke out during his first interview since taking post.

His comments come amid anger about patients being denied new drugs for kidney cancer on the NHS. The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC), which guides the health service on which new treatments to prescribe, has rejected three of these drugs.

Mr Powrie-Smith said there was conflict between such decisions and the Scottish Government's ambitions to be a world leader in the life science field. He said: "If your ambition is to be the number one place for outcomes for patients and the number one place for clinical research, it is not smart not to use the optimal treatment. If you are a company globally looking around to do your next study you are asking who is at the forefront of the treatment of a particular condition."

This, he said, was because firms wanted to compare their new drug with the best therapies already available.

He called for different methodology to help get new medicines - in particular drugs for rare cancers - approved by SMC, stressing that smaller improvements needed to be supported in order to achieve bigger medical break-throughs.

Mr Powrie-Smith said: "You might say this new drug is slightly more expensive and it is only 10 or 15% better than the previous one, but it is that incremental step-change which has really brought about the significant advances over many years. It is rare someone comes out with Eureka."

He said the Scottish Government could adjust the criteria which SMC uses when assessing new medicines, if they wanted to. A spokesman for SMC said: "SMC requests information from manufacturers to demonstrate how effective a drug is and how the cost of the drug represents a fair price for the NHS to pay. Where a manufacturer has not demonstrated that a drug is good value for money it will not be recommended by SMC."

The spokesman also said submissions from clinical experts and patient-interest groups were taken into account.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Scottish Government and NHS Scotland are committed to ensuring the speedy implementation of effective new drugs and treatments in Scotland and to maintaining Scotland's reputation as an international centre of excellence for medical research.

"SMC's remit is to provide advice to all NHS boards and their area drug and therapeutics committees across Scotland about the status of all newly-licensed medicines, all new formulations of existing medicines and new indications for established products. The SMC operates entirely separately from the Scottish Government and Scottish ministers and its decisions are made after careful consideration of the evidence by a panel of experts from different fields, including clinicians and public partners."