High hopes for NHS and life sciences industry partnerships, but what does it really take to make them a success?

The potential for wider and deeper partnerships between the NHS and life sciences sector is getting increasing airtime. Earlier this month, the government announced a new national strategic collaboration with a major pharmaceutical company, hailing this as a route to improving both the nation’s health and economic prosperity. Mentions in numerous speeches since taking office and the ambitions set out in Labour’s life sciences plan published earlier this year leave little doubt around the enthusiasm of the new government for the life sciences industry and the potential for it to collaborate more closely with the NHS. 

But what does it take to make these partnerships work in practice? What does collaboration between the NHS and industry actually look and feel like? And what are the key conditions for success?

We’ve been exploring these questions at The King’s Fund over the past six months through case study research into collaborative working projects between NHS organisations and pharmaceutical companies. Collaborative working projects are a well-established way for NHS and industry partners to work together, underpinned by extensive guidance and requirements. We’ll be publishing a detailed report setting out our full findings next month.

One thing that stood out across our case-studies is that this is not easy work. Alongside the usual challenges inherent to cross organisational collaboration, these partnerships must navigate different organisational cultures and contexts across the public and private sectors. Building relationships and trust between partners is a pre-condition for successful partnerships of all types, but NHS–industry partnerships are often starting from a lower baseline, sometimes contending with deeply held scepticism and mistrust around the role and motivations of pharmaceutical companies. All this has to be overcome to achieve meaningful collaboration, alongside rigorous safeguards to mitigate risks and guard against conflicts of interest.

So, is it worth the effort? The case studies we looked at suggest, in the right circumstances, the answer can be ‘yes’. At their best, these partnerships can be powerful catalysts for improvements in patient care, bringing access to resources to pump-prime change, and to a depth and breadth of skills and expertise within these often large, global companies. Take, for example, the Hep C U Later programme. This ambitious 5-year partnership between the NHS Addictions Provider Alliance and Gilead Sciences drove targeted testing and treatment for hepatitis c via community drug and alcohol services (whose services work with many of those most at risk from hepatitis C). More than 40,000 tests were taken over the course of the programme and many more people have been successfully treated and cured as a result.

Partnerships of this kind are not a panacea and are certainly not without challenges. But in the context of an NHS desperately in need of transformation but often lacking the resource and headspace to make it, it is timely to consider their role as an addition to the menu of options available to support improvement, and to do so with a meaningful understanding of what it takes to make them a success.