WEBCAST: Delivering mutual benefit from NHS and Pharma partnerships grasping the opportunities
With the help of a panel of eminent speakers with a wide range of experience and expertise this half-day PM Society conference, held at the King's Fund in London, set out to discuss the best way for the industry to engage with the NHS. See what the speakers had to say and the discussion that followed by viewing the videos below.
Introduction
Ivor Eisenstadt (PM Society) opened the meeting by outlining that partnership working is central to the ABPI agenda.
Chairing the meeting, Roy Lilley stressed that history is currently being made in the health service and many people will find the changes uncomfortable, so it is important to concentrate on initiatives that are known to work well - partnerships between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry are such an example.
The changing dynamic in the NHS
Sarah Phillips (Head of Health, Ipsos MORI) examined the changing dynamic in the NHS, she stressed that the challenges in joint working are the massive changes currently ongoing in the NHS, the change in patient's expectation of the physician, and that GPs will move to the front line in answering those patient expectations.
Public health in the new world - What relationship could a 'Medical Officer of Health' possibly have with pharmaceutical marketing?
Chris Packham (Director of Public Health in Nottingham City PCT) explained that the essence of successful commissioning dictates that good public health skills will be needed, NHS rationing (prioritisation) and the balancing of cost-effective interventions will be a challenge for GPs without such skills. As consortia will be expected to deliver much of this capacity from private sector input, Pharma may want to think about future public health skill capacity itself.
QIPP in a cold climate
Neal Maskrey (Director of Evidence Based Therapeutics, National Prescribing Centre) qualified as a doctor in 1975 when the NHS felt like it was held together with Elastoplast and string, and in his view it still feels that way today. A key element going forward is to reduce the unjustifiable regional variations in clinical practice, and to work to achieve quality and productivity savings, so that these savings can be invested in new technologies which are currently underused.
Value-based pricing and formularies in the new era
Omar Ali (Formulary Development Pharmacist with Surrey & Sussex NHS Trust) noted that the cost of certain drugs appeared out be of step with patient benefit, the idea behind QIPP (Quality, Innovation, Productivity, Prevention) was to look at why drugs are used and the benefit they provide to the patient. Over time, drug companies redesigned their trials to reflect the QIPP agenda and the hope was that ultimately pricing would be related to patient- and payer-related outcomes.
Partnership - business jargon or reality
Andrew Roberts (Head of NHS Partnerships at AstraZeneca), suggested that since the joint working toolkit was launched there has been a huge increase in joint working projects and wider collaborative projects. However most joint working agreements only got off the ground last year, but where outcomes exist they are showing a more structured approach to care delivery in the locality and they do release efficiencies.
Nagging suitor, reluctant bride
Andy Davis (Sales Director, Lundbeck) reminded us that it is vital for the industry to understand what the customer is trying to achieve and the environment they are working in. They want discussion about the service and the patient and not about medication, the days of presenting the NHS with a clinical paper stating drug X is better than drug Y are long gone, so why does every company still do it?
As you can imagine the presentations generated a lot of discussion and some of the debate can be seen via the clips below
Held on: 14/10/2010