Partnerships between the NHS and industry can lead to tangible benefits for patients and the NHS. In this article, Dr Amit Aggarwal, Executive Director of Medical Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), talks about how partnerships have developed and makes the case for greater ambition in partnership working, including in the field of immunology.
A history of partnerships
The UK healthcare industry has seen substantial change over the past 20 years, with game-changing technologies and treatment advancements from cell and gene therapy to AI-driven diagnosis.
A lesser-known – but no less important – advance occurred in 2008, when the Department of Health and Social Care and the ABPI established criteria for ‘joint working’ between the NHS and industry.
The term was highly specific and was defined as ‘Situations where, for the benefit of patients, one or more pharmaceutical companies and the NHS pool skills, experience and/or resources for the joint development and implementation of patient centred projects and share a commitment for successful delivery.’
Innovation is a team sport. We want as many patients as possible to benefit from the best that health innovation has to offer. That requires effective partnerships between the NHS and our innovative life science companies.
Richard Stubbs, Chair, Health Innovation Network
Joint working allowed, and continues to allow, some marked improvements to patient care at local level. One example was the ‘Don’t wait to anticoagulate’ project between the then West of England Academic Health Science Network, Gloucestershire CCG, Bayer, and many others. In a 12-week period, it was estimated to have prevented 13 strokes.
Since 2021, joint working has been supplemented with ‘collaborative working’ which gives companies and healthcare organisations the ability to expand the scope of how they work. Collaborative working, instead of only being for the direct benefit of patients, can have as its focus a benefit the NHS – although it must, as a minimum, maintain patient care. This allows for projects that improve efficiency, for example by reducing patient waiting times for services. One example in a Health Board in Wales, reduced diagnostic test turnaround times for head and neck cancer by 32 per cent.
Both joint working and collaborative projects must have the right governance and safeguards in place, and be in line with the strict requirements of the ABPI Code of Practice.
These requirements ensure that partnerships have clear objectives, with benefits to patients and the NHS at their centre. Partnerships must also be transparent, and transfers of value must be declared via our industry’s Disclosure UK platform. We have developed guidance, co-authored with the NHS Confederation, for anyone setting up a partnership. It includes practical resources on contracting, conducting and measuring the results of a successful partnership.
Under the right circumstances, the King’s Fund, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the NHS Confederation have acknowledged the value of external expertise in helping the NHS overcome challenges.
Companies should play their part to help the NHS improve care and narrow the gap on health inequalities. By working together, companies and the NHS can do more to reach underserved communities than we could achieve alone.
Bola Owolabi, Director of the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme at NHS England
The case for greater partnership
The recent Darzi review graphically illustrated the pressures the NHS is under, and referenced partnership as one route that can help the NHS deal with those pressures.
“For the NHS, partnerships with the life science sector for research or treatment too often fall into the category of ‘important but not urgent’. It is doubtful that there is an NHS leader in the country who would not recognise that research and innovation are important. It has simply not been a high enough priority in a world where waiting lists are long, and finances are tight. But in the medium term, it is innovation that can make the NHS more sustainable.”
NHS leaders have been exploring how they can partner with others to improve healthcare for the populations they serve for some time. Indeed, Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) were created with this mission in mind – to bring partners together to collaborate rather than compete, to prevent and treat ill health earlier rather than later, to address need rather than just demand. But with immense pressure on services and the people who work in them, change is hard. NHS staff often lack the time and ‘head space’ to drive change and improvement at the pace required. So, help is needed.
There is growing evidence that, with the right guardrails in place, partnerships deliver meaningful benefits to patients and services. We have a long-established library that now holds more than 180 examples of successful partnerships around the country. This year, for the first time, we commissioned consultancy Carnall Farrar to systematically measure how NHS–industry partnerships support improved patient outcomes, using data from across the NHS.
Their report found that hospitals engaging in industry partnerships are up to 2.5 times more likely to follow NICE recommendations for prescribing clinically and cost-effective medicines more closely, compared to hospitals that do not.
Appropriate use of medicines closer to NICE guidelines was, in turn, associated with better outcomes for patients in the areas of care studied, keeping their conditions under better control.
There were also early indications that partnerships in Primary Care Networks (PCNs) were associated with improved disease management, such as blood sugar and blood pressure control.
This is the first such analysis of NHS-industry partnerships conducted in this way and, while more work in this area is needed, the research gives us a glimpse of what might be possible if we can increase the scale and ambition of the partnerships we undertake.
Example of partnership in the field of immunology
Novartis worked with Leeds Teaching Hospitals to improve care for people with arthritis. The project created a completely new service – the first remote monitoring pathway in rheumatology in Leeds.
Alongside patients, the team developed a digital tool to help people with arthritis manage their condition. It also created a team to provide advice when needed, including rheumatology nurses and consultants.
The project has helped people struggling with arthritis to receive earlier care, and improved capacity in clinics. Find out more on the Novartis website.
Projects like this, set up with patients at their heart, under the governance of the ABPI Code of Practice, have huge potential to improve healthcare. We would encourage NHS leaders in the field of immunology to explore them further.
And finally
Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has recognised the value of partnerships with industry at a national level. Announcing a government collaboration to tackle obesity with Eli Lilly recently, he said: “Partnerships like this are key to building a healthier society, healthier economy and making the NHS fit for the future.”
We believe that now is the time for a new relationship between the NHS and industry, focused on transformational – not transactional – partnerships. They are one way to take ‘the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS’, as the Health Secretary has said is essential.
More examples of how industry is working in partnership with the NHS are available on the ABPI website.
To speak to the ABPI about the possibility of a partnership with industry, contact nrastani@abpi.org.uk.
Dr Amit Aggarwal, Executive Director of Medical Affairs and Strategic Partnerships, ABPI