Reforming Elective Care NHS roadmap points way to collaboration for pharma, med tech and device companies
The first significant NHS document to be released in 2025 is called ‘Reforming elective care for patients’ and it marks a pivotal moment in trying to address the backlog of non-urgent procedures that have put such a huge strain on the NHS in England.
As the NHS tries to navigate this reform, there are going to be significant opportunities for pharmaceutical, medical technology and device companies to collaborate and innovate in ways that align with the goals and aspirations from this particular document.
The general feeling with some of my NHS customers is that this paper – in terms of its context and objectives – represents a comprehensive strategy to try to address the challenges coming from prolonged waiting times aligned with the significant workforce shortages within the NHS.
Five objectives to improve service delivery
The document highlights the belief that there are inefficiencies in service delivery, and it aims to tackle them via five overarching objectives:
1. Reduce waiting lists by streamlining pathways to ensure timely treatment for patients on the elective care lists.
2. Enhance patient experience, including promoting patient-centred care through improved access and much better communication with patients.
3. Going back to what Lord Darzi recommended, they want to leverage digital innovation through implementing advanced technologies for diagnostics, for triage and for remote monitoring of patients.
4. Expand capacity by creating additional diagnostic appointments in community diagnostic centres and also in treatment centres.
5. Integrate care pathways to foster collaboration between primary care, secondary care and community services.
These goals provide fertile ground for partnership with pharma, med tech and device companies because they can contribute by being innovative, by supporting some of the funding models and through the technology implementation.
Priority number one – get the queues down
The big priority here is clearing the backlogs. It’s a central pillar of this proposed reform with a target to reduce the queues for elective procedures. As we know, that backlog has grown substantially post-COVID, and I would argue it was growing pre-COVID. Not all the NHS’s problems stem from the COVID pandemic, but it does tend to get isolated as the anchor point, especially by politicians.
But there is no doubt there are backlogs, and they’re exacerbated by workforce constraints – there’s too much work and not enough people to meet the demand. Meeting the demand is why we need more innovative approaches.
We also have an ageing population – many of us are living longer. That’s good news for most of us, but longer lives come with long-term conditions, complexity and problems.
The opportunities for industry here are wide-ranging. Med tech companies could introduce scheduling and capacity management software that helps optimise theatre and diagnostic utilisation.
The device companies could supply portable imaging to enable faster diagnostics out in community settings to help reduce the bottlenecks in secondary care. And the pharma companies could promote therapies that improve patient outcomes, particularly for people with long-term chronic conditions, reducing the need for hospital intervention.
Patients deserve a better level of communication
Patient-centred care is a key focus for this particular document, there’s a real emphasis on ensuring patients feel informed and supported throughout their journey.
That includes better transparency and a desire for communication about waiting times and what the care options are. Opportunities here could include patient engagement platforms. The med tech firms could provide digital solutions enabling patients to track their own treatment and progress and communicate with the care teams.
Pharma companies might develop materials around patient education, particularly about their condition and about the available treatment options they could be given.
For device manufacturers, it’s about wearable technology, anything that allows continuous monitoring and providing real-time data to help patients better manage the condition while they await procedures.
We know how important digital innovation is – Lord Darzi emphasised it last September. There’s a real belief that this can improve efficiency and help improve patient outcomes. That could be the introduction of AI-driven diagnostics, telemedicine and improving electronic patient records. All of that is expected to revolutionise elective care delivery.
Opportunities here abound – companies could partner with the NHS to deploy AI tools to analyse scans and tests to help accelerate clinical decision-making. Pharma firms could support telehealth solutions, anything that supports pre-operative and post-operative consultation and reduces the need for face-to-face contact in buildings would be really helpful.
And of course, med tech can continue to create platforms that integrate seamlessly with NHS systems and improve data sharing across the entire care pathway, particularly between the different providers in primary care, community services and secondary care.
Great opportunities around closer-to-home care
When it comes to expanding capacity, one of the reforms put forward is that they want to see community diagnostic centres open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s a goal within that to decentralise care to relieve pressure on hospitals – though quite how they’ll staff it is a different matter.
The idea is the centres will offer imaging, blood tests and other diagnostic services out in the community, close to patients’ homes. The med tech sector with its mobile diagnostic units and the device companies with their portable solutions could enable the community diagnostic centres to really crack on with delivery.
Pharma companies could work with the community diagnostic centres to lay on training and education, particularly on new therapies and new medicines to ensure their availability as quickly as possible.
For all pharma, med tech and device companies, there is a real opportunity here and now to collaborate with the NHS on new care delivery models. There’s an opportunity to be innovative and help them really focus on the patient outcome. That could lead to the providers negotiating outcome-based reimbursement models with the NHS. Something that’s long been mooted – aligned payment incentive – could suddenly burst into life with this kind of approach.
How can industry help ease the workforce crisis?
We have to talk about the workforce solutions because the NHS continues to face significant shortages of people and that’s a barrier to delivering not only elective care but also the diagnostics.
This reform includes initiatives to upscale staff, streamline the administrative tasks and optimise all the clinical workforce and workflow.
The opportunities here for industry are training programmes and educational initiatives to support the clinicians in adopting new treatments and technologies. If there are robotic processes and automation tools, here’s a great opportunity to have them adopted and anything that will assist the clinical leads in making faster evidence-based decisions is going to be very, very welcome.
That ties neatly into integrating care pathways and collaboration across the different sectors because the success of any of these reforms really does hinge on better integration between primary, community and secondary care.
This is where multi-disciplinary teams would play a crucial role across those providers in delivering seamless care. So, again, there’s some great opportunities for pharma, med tech and device companies to pilot integrated care pathways that align with NHS priorities – early intervention, prevention-led, early and correct diagnosis, early and correct treatment, fewer appointments, referrals and non-elective admissions.
These are all areas where tools and data help analyse patients and optimise care pathways.
An open door for pharma companies
Prevention is a key theme of these reforms. They want to reduce demand for elective care by focusing on prevention and early intervention, managing chronic conditions proactively out in primary care and reduce the need for hospital-based treatments.
Clearly, if you’re a pharma company with preventative therapies, there’s an open door here. If you make devices, any tools for early detection of conditions, particularly cancer and cardiovascular disease, are going to be very welcome.
Health promotion campaigns also provide opportunities for industry to partner with the NHS to design campaigns encouraging us to have healthier lifestyles and regular checkups.
Every aspect of the reform is a good opportunity for pharma, med tech and device firms
There is no escaping the financial pressure the NHS is operating under. This necessitates innovative funding models – collaboration with the private sector is one of them.
The document highlights value-based partnerships, where outcomes determine the payments. This is something I get asked for a lot by the NHS – are the pharmaceutical, medical technology and device companies prepared to offer risk-sharing agreements or outcome guarantees?
So, there’s a great opportunity where pharma companies could propose outcome-based pricing, particularly for higher cost drugs used in elective care. In other words – the patient gets an outcome, and the NHS pays for it. If the patient doesn’t get an outcome, they don’t pay for it, or they get a reduced price or some sort of reimbursement.
Data collection holds the key
The reforms highlight the importance of measuring outcomes through real world evidence and that’s something pharma, med tech and device companies do really well. They offer the solutions that collect and analyse data from NHS settings, so it’s real NHS data that’s then being used and presented back.
Pharma could partner on studies to evaluate the impact of newer treatments on elective care outcomes. If we could develop platforms that make real world evidence accessible to all stakeholders, including the patients, then we may well start to see different ways the NHS engages around this.
In short, the NHS elective care reform 2025 is highly ambitious. It’s a big agenda and there’s a desire to transform how non-urgent care is delivered. For pharma, med tech and device companies, it offers a wealth of opportunities to innovate, to collaborate and to work in different ways with the NHS.
It’s all about aligning with NHS priorities, which are reducing waiting lists, enhancing the patient experience, leveraging digital innovation and having a laser focus on promoting preventative care.
If the industry stakeholders do that, they will play a role in supporting the transformation while driving their own strategic objectives. This isn’t just a challenge for the NHS. It’s a much broader call to action across the healthcare system to get people working together to deliver sustainable, high quality care.
Scott McKenzie helps pharmaceutical, medical technology, and device firms get their products and services in front of the right NHS decision-makers. In 2023 alone, he helped land 53 new NHS projects. His 12-month mentorship programme – revamped and expanded for 2025 – offers tools, insights and introductions to get your projects over the line. Find out more here.