NHS to collaborate with pharma on innovation
pharmafile | December 8, 2011 | News story | Sales and Marketing | ABPI, NHS, NHS Confederation, collaboration
The NHS Confederation is to hold a series of strategic meetings with the pharma industry and the medical technology industries to promote innovation in the NHS.
The four events will focus on a handful of key areas in which the NHS wants to improve its services:
- mental health, including dementia
- circulatory disorders
- diabetes
- cancers and tumours
- long-term conditions.
A total of four events will be held, with the first planned to be held in London on 2 February 2012. The Confederation hopes the meetings will showcase how joint working can help the health service.
NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said: “The NHS needs to do more to encourage the spread of innovation across the NHS.
The Confederation represents health service managers, many of whom have little engagement with the pharma and medical devices industries, something Farrar wants to change.
“The NHS Confederation is well placed to help with these issues and I am determined that we rise that challenge. We can help our members to promote and spread innovation from within, creating a pull factor for successful products.”
He added said the Confederation would also look to promote innovative leadership at the meetings, and highlight positive role models from across the NHS.
Farrar has a track record in collaborating with the pharma industry, and seems determined to bring the health service and pharma and the medical devices industry closer together.
But NHS managers are now under great pressure to manage the twin pressures of reform and the cost-saving QIPP programme.
The four events will provide pharma firms with the opportunity to meet senior NHS managers to discuss how innovation could help them to improve care for patients.
Farrar said that senior NHS managers from the priority clinical areas are encouraged to attend the event, particularly those responsible for looking at innovation to deliver QIPP objectives.
NHS service improvement directors, commissioners and CCG leads, and any others looking at innovation as a way of meeting efficiency objectives are also invited.
The Confederation said: “After the showcase, we will work with those attending to take forward the ideas and use the NHS Confederation’s members to communicate their results.
“This will help to shorten the gap between proof of concept and achieving a critical mass of services deploying the technology.”
Ben Adams
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