That is most definitely an issue, but not one that is so much tied to the regulations making things take longer. My solution would be to reimburse the R&D costs directly (to help with risk) in addition to having govenrment-financed labs whose sole mission is to improve medicine in general. I'm not sure how this stuff works in other countries: I'm from the US and don't know all the ins and outs of the healthcare system here yet.

It'd still take some years to get some things to market, however, because some things need studied for a longer time.