Why NHS-Industry Partnerships are set to grow in 2025

Introduction

A new year is under way – but the challenges the NHS and its industry partners are aiming to solve remain the same: solving the patient capacity issue, improving efficiency and achieving better patient outcomes. What approaches can we expect in 2025?

All the signs point to a significant increase in NHS-Industry Partnerships, which drive innovation in the delivery of patient healthcare.

Here, we explain why these partnerships will be central to tackling key challenges within the NHS in 2025. We also highlight five NHS-Industry Partnership trends to look out for this year.

The value of NHS partnership working programmes and other industry collaborations

Patient capacity continues to be a significant issue in the NHS today, owing to a ‘perfect storm’ of factors. These include:

• A lack of long-term budget in primary care
• The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
• An increase in complex long-term conditions
• New medicines requiring new patient pathways
• An exhausted workforce, with experienced staff choosing to leave the profession

These are complex issues and we know that solving them is about more than simply increasing the amount of money or trained staff available.

Innovation in the delivery of healthcare is one of the most compelling solutions – and central to that innovation is the design and delivery of NHS-Industry Partnerships.

Here’s why we expect these partnerships to increase in number, scope, and ambition in 2025.

Growing recognition of value

There’s growing recognition among government and industry bodies of the value of NHS-Industry Partnerships.

Research commissioned by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) recently found that these partnerships deliver a “triple win” of “better patient outcomes, more efficient NHS resource use, and clear impact evidence for the industry”.

Meanwhile, Lord Darzi’s recent independent review of the NHS in England noted that partnerships between the NHS and the life science sector deliver “innovations [that] improve the effectiveness of treatments and offer hope where treatments have not existed before”.

The report concludes that “In the medium term, it is innovation that can make the NHS more sustainable”, noting that – at the time of writing – partnerships between the NHS and the life sciences sector “too often fall into the category of ‘important but not urgent'”.

Best practice established

In recent months, a number of strong, well-researched frameworks for partnership working between the NHS and industry have been published:

• In collaboration with the NHS Confederation, the ABPI has published best practice guidelines for NHS-Industry Partnerships. The guidelines highlight the role of partnership working to ensure faster patient access to new treatments while enabling better budget planning.
• A report from The King’s Fund, ‘NHS and life sciences industry partnerships: collaborating to improve care’, identifies a set of principles underpinning effective NHS–Industry Partnerships, which cover the areas of purpose, people, and process.

These frameworks help to support confidence in NHS-Industry Partnerships and promote confidence and consistency in their design and delivery.

Stakeholder engagement at an all-time high

Engagement among stakeholders for NHS-Industry Partnerships has never been higher.

Here at CHASE, the UK's leading independent outsourcing service provider for healthcare and pharmaceuticals, we’re seeing an increased appetite from the NHS to work collaboratively with industry partners.

We’re also hearing from the pharmaceutical industry its motivation to share its tech know-how, data analysis capabilities, and project management skills to add a great deal of value to the NHS through partnership working programmes.

We may even see further government support for NHS-Industry Partnerships in Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s 10-year plan, which is expected in the Spring.

With the value of partnership working between the NHS and industry now recognised at government level, best practice cemented, and stakeholder buy-in increasingly secured, we expect these partnerships to play an even more significant role in addressing key NHS challenges this year.

Five trends we expect to see in NHS-Industry Partnerships in 2025

With NHS-Industry Partnerships set to increase, here are 5 trends we expect to see over the next 12 months:

1.    The demand for NHS partnership working programmes with industry partners will increase

The value of partnership working between the NHS and industry partners is now well recognised and understood.

The ‘transfer of value’ declared in partnership working programmes grew from £7.1 million in 2021 to £24.9 million in 2023 and is likely to grow again between 2024 and 2026.

We anticipate this increased recognition of value will result in greater demand for these programmes. It’s a trend we’re noticing already in the interest we receive for our partnership working services here at CHASE. 

2.    Companies will continue to build market access and healthcare partnership teams

We’re seeing evidence of life sciences companies positioning themselves to deliver a greater volume of partnership working programmes.

A number of companies have recently restructured to build market access and healthcare partnership teams who are responsible for working collaboratively with the NHS. Other companies are likely to follow in their footsteps this year.

3.    Hospitals will continue to hire personnel to drive industry partnerships

We’ve also seen hospitals hiring personnel to be responsible for driving partnerships with life sciences for research and innovation purposes. It seems likely this will be an ongoing hiring trend in 2025.

4.    There’ll be a shift towards large-scale national programmes

We anticipate there’ll be a shift away from small-scale projects towards large-scale national programmes. A major pharmaceutical company’s recent pledge of over £200m for a Real World Evidence programme demonstrates the closer working relationship between government and industry we’ll see more of going forward.

Given there is already strong support in Northern Ireland for national partnerships with life sciences, and similar recommendations for the UK in the King’s Fund Report, other companies may be prompted to make similar large-scale moves in 2025.

5.    Obesity could be a focus for some of these programmes

So, what kind of projects can we anticipate from NHS-Industry Partnerships in 2025?

Here at CHASE, we’ve seen demand among NHS and life sciences companies alike for projects that can be scaled quickly. There’s also a great appetite for programmes that redesign pathways for greater efficiency and sustainability, and projects that use technology to address health inequalities.

One particular focus of some of these programmes could be obesity. It’s an issue that’s currently severely lacking in capacity, infrastructure, and funding:

• The global spend on obesity drugs is expected to rise to $93bn in 2030.
• By 2030, it’s anticipated there will be over 1bn obese adults, representing a  $4.3tn cost to society.

NHS-Industry Partnerships focus on innovating how patients are treated, helping more patients get treatment, and making healthcare more accessible, fair and affordable. With this in mind, the challenge of obesity seems like a particularly strong match for future programmes.

2025: A defining year for NHS-Industry Partnerships

With policy, best practice, and stakeholder engagement all coming together in recent months – along with some significant industry investments – we expect NHS-Industry Partnerships to increase significantly in 2025.

Here at CHASE, we anticipate these partnerships will become both bigger and more ambitious in scope. We’ll continue to play our part by designing and delivering innovative NHS-Industry Partnership programmes that achieve results and leave a legacy for patients and the NHS.