The Pharma Files: with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
pharmafile | November 3, 2025 | Feature | Medical Communications, Research and Development |Â Â Corporate, NHS, The Pharma Files, healthcare professionals, patient care, patientsÂ
Pharmafile chats with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, about the best parts of his job and his proudest moments.
What excites me about working in pharma is…
The impact that it can have on people’s lives when it’s done well.
What I’m most proud of achieving in my career is…
There are many things but, if I had to choose one, it would be the way we prepared ourselves rapidly for the COVID-19 pandemic in the hospital where I worked in 2020. I personally led the task forces, ensuring we had sufficient ventilators, critical care beds and oxygen supply working with an impressive team of experts. Dealing with a new disease where staff were facing significant personal risk and being able to significantly increase critical care and respiratory capacity over an incredibly short time period while dealing with a continually emerging situation was incredibly challenging, but rewarding.
The biggest change since I started working in pharma has been…
The impact of technology on care. When I started work as a doctor, a lot of patients spent days in hospital on continuous infusions of heparin to thin their blood. Later, low molecule weight heparins allowed for outpatient daily injections and after that, direct oral anti coagulants allowed treatment with tablets. Things like laparoscopic surgery and enhanced recovery mean that operations that left patients in hospital for seven to ten days can now be done with only an overnight stay.
The next big thing that I’m excited about is…
The obvious answer is AI. While it’s likely that it will have less of an impact on care in the short term (probably making tasks we currently perform quicker, easier and more accurate), it will completely transform care in the longer term in ways we cannot yet imagine. Given the long-term challenges all healthcare systems are facing with an ageing population and fewer working-age people to deliver and fund healthcare, we need something that will completely disrupt the model of care.
What motivates me the most is…
Delivering the best care possible within the resources we have available. As a doctor, that means trying to deliver excellent care to a small number of individuals. As a chief executive, it means trying to have a positive impact on the healthcare of 280,000 people.
The most important skill I’ve learnt is…
This sounds really obvious but, early in my career, I thought that success was dependent on what I did myself. I now know that the most important skill is to build a highly skilled and well-functioning team and to support them to work effectively together.
The most difficult part of my job is…
Balancing the needs of patients and services with the available resources, particularly in the current economic situation.
The piece of work that was so good I wish I had been involved is…
The Novel prize-winning discovery that many stomach and duodenal ulcers were caused by an infection (Helicobacter pylori) and could be cured with antibiotics completely revolutionised the treatment of these conditions, saving countless lives and preventing the need for large numbers of patients to undergo surgery. I was lucky enough to carry out research into recurrent infection and antibiotic resistance earlier in my career but the original discovery was truly transformative to patient care.
The most positive part of working in the industry is…
The impact that you can have on people’s lives, particularly when delivering at scale. As a doctor, it’s very rewarding to make a difference to individual patients but, as a healthcare leader, it’s even more rewarding when your services make a difference to populations of patients.
The best advice I’ve been given is…
To make sure that I focus enough on managing my physical and mental well-being. Making sure that you eat healthily, exercise regularly and get plenty of sleep – among other things – means that you are in the best place to cope with the demands of the job.
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