Welcome to the Life Science Hub, a new integrated offer for the life sciences industry, delivered collaboratively by experts from the NHS’s four Commissioning Support Units.
On this page:
Who we are
We combine national-level data and analytics capability with a deep understanding of the typical challenges the Life Sciences industry experience in terms of adoption of recommended treatments across care pathways. Our team enable the NHS to work more effectively with industry through a clear value improvement lens.
Our reach ranges from national decision makers to individual GPs. We provide a unique competitive advantage, through convening direct partnership opportunities with the NHS.
Our offer
We help the life sciences industry identify and connect with the points in the NHS where their innovations can have the greatest impact.
We understand that the NHS and industry face the same challenges of delivering the right care to patients at the right time. The three key pillars of our offer help you to better understand the value of your product to the NHS, where it will work best and the impact it will have.
1. Strategic Advisory Capabilities
From population data and analytics to workforce planning, our expert team has the skills to help you grow your innovation from concept to evidence-backed offer.
2. Creating Value in Existing Capabilities
Can you offer better value and population impact to the NHS? We will help you demonstrate the value of your innovation for existing services and therapeutics.
3. Innovation Ready
Looking to the future, what are your best opportunities for adoption in the NHS? We can help you understand where your innovation will land and what the impact will be, while overcoming barriers to adoption.
Our Services
Whether you’re a start-up looking to understand how you can start working with the NHS, or you have an established offer that you want to better understand the impact of, we offer a range of bespoke services to suit your needs.
New to market treatment/technology
- Assessing NHS readiness for adopting new innovations
- Health economic analysis to provide evidence for NHS adoption
- Stakeholder engagement to ensure smooth market entry
- Developing implementation strategies to integrate new technologies into NHS workflows
Optimising existing treatments/technologies
- Medicines optimisation programmes to enhance treatment efficacy
- Service redesign and pathway improvements for better patient outcomes
- Audits and data-driven insights to optimise prescribing and resource use
- Implementing digital tools to improve the efficiency of existing treatments
Operational and strategic support
- Coaching and development programmes
- Strategic partnership development with NHS executives
- Supporting the NHS in achieving sustainability goals
- Training packages on business case development and specialised commissioning
- Long-term strategic planning and follow-up coaching
Our offer for the NHS
The Life Science Hub offers a bridge between industry and the NHS. As part of the NHS, we understand the challenges which decision makers and commissioners face and our expert team can help you navigate them.
Our services for the NHS include:
- Evidence generation – helping you understand the impact that new technologies will have in your system and making a case for their adoption
- Pathway optimisation – exploring treatment and prevention pathways and finding the best solutions to optimise budgets for improved population health
- Programme support – ensuring innovations are adopted swiftly, smoothly and sustainably
Our work
Partnering with industry to help NHS commissioners prevent Atrial Fibrillation Strokes
Members of the data science team from the ML’s Health Economics Unit were sponsored by the BMS-Pfizer Alliance to create an Atrial Fibrillation digital toolkit, allowing NHS commissioners to identify impactful treatments and interventions in their area.
Andi Orlowski and Wayne Smith, of the Health Economics Unit, used published data of primary care performance, QOF targets and prevalence estimates to identify optimal goals for AF management, and helped to create realistic business plans for treating the condition. They created a digital tool which CCGs could use with their own local data, to identify gaps in services and calculate their potential costs.
As part of an online AF Toolkit, the work:
- prevented an estimated 500 strokes
- saved a potential $3m per year
- secured £300,000 investment from industry
More than 25 new partnerships were established to support the AF stroke-prevention programme.
Identifying Medicines Optimisation opportunities for ICBs
NHS ML has partnered with MORPh Consultancy Ltd to develop a service to deliver quality medication reviews, which include the potential to provide the most cost-effective medication for patients and quality in prescribing.
The service, which is funded by pharma industry, through funding grants in line with the ABPI guidance, aims for quality improvement in prescribing for patients. A high-level outline of the service includes:
- Data analysis to confirm benefit from reviews e.g. potential overuse
- Ensure clinical outcomes are optimal and comply with NICE guidelines and associated resources
- Ensure that prescribing offers best value to the NHS in line with local guidelines and formulary
- Use NHS ML reviewed Standard Operating Procedures for the medication reviews
- Identify and manage adverse effects/side effects in the patient population
- Advise patients upon lifestyle modifications and reinforce positive behaviours where appropriate.
- Patient information shared with the patient where appropriate.
- NHS post audit review to confirm learning and quality of the work for evaluation
The service is being piloted in ICBs, where the partnership is aiming to improve efficacy in prescribing.
Creating evidence to drive change in end-of-life care policy in the UK
Marie Curie UK aims to improve the standard of publicly-funded end-of-life care in the UK. To do this, they asked the Health Economics Unit, in collaboration with the Nuffield Trust, to help them understand the cost of this care, and where the gaps lie in spending.
The HEU and the Nuffield Trust undertook a comprehensive analysis of published data and statistics and extensive stakeholder engagement to estimate how much health care, social care and social security funding was spent on people in their last year of life across all four nations of the United Kingdom (UK) in 2022.
The estimated spend on people in the last year of life in the UK in 2022 was estimated to be at least £22.1 Billion. This figure, and the HEU’s further analysis, was used as the foundation for Marie Curie’s campaign to improve end-of-life care, which went to a parliamentary advisory committee and made headlines across the UK, including in The Guardian and on the BBC.
Swiftly introducing new technology to meet new demand during the pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic NHS England suddenly faced a huge increase in demand for Electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD), which allows prescribers to authorise and issue a batch of repeat prescriptions for up to 12 months.
Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (ML), Arden and GEM Commissioning Support Unit (AGEM CSU), East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) and West Midlands Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) were asked to collaboratively coordinate a rapid at-scale rollout of eRD.
Using the project management expertise of the ML Medicines Management and Optimisation (MMO) team, the following programme of delivery was rolled out:
- Creation of a dedicated eRD queries e-mail inbox helpline
- Delivery of two eRD webinars focussing on implementation of eRD with associated output of a Frequently Asked Questions document
- Sharing of an eRD Standard Operating Procedure template, that could be adopted on a wider scale.
- Development of an eRD FutureNHS Platform to host eRD specific discussions and provide an eRD document resource library.
As a result of this work 405 Healthcare professionals registered onto the newly created eRD FutureNHS platform, with almost 2,000 documents downloaded from the platform – approximately five documents per user.
Collaborating to improving medicines management and governance
The Sue Ryder charitable organisation has a portfolio of 10 services, one hub site and central support delivering palliative and neurological care services across the UK. The organisation’s clinical governance group asked ML to provide support with medicines management and medicines governance across the organisation.
The ML carried out comprehensive stakeholder engagement within Sue Ryder, including site visits, face-to-face interviews, anonymised questionnaires and telephone interviews of pharmacists and business intelligence specialists.
From this research the ML created a report with actionable recommendations for the next steps for the organisation, including:
- Increase the number of medicines management audits in the services.
- Each service to develop its own medicines policy.
- Evaluation of the service level agreements with the community pharmacies that provide support to the services.
- A scoping exercise to consider senior pharmacist support for the organisation both at central level and within the services.
- Develop a governance framework for non-medical prescribers (NMP) with audits of prescribing patterns.
- Further develop the use of Datix with individual benchmarking for both neurological and palliative services.
Reviewing medicines to improve patient outcomes
The long-term prescribing of anticholinergic drugs, used to treat urinary incontinence, has been associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment, dementia and mortality. Clinicians in the Greater Preston and Chorley and South Ribble Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) needed a way to identify patients who would be eligible for a four-week ‘drug holiday’ review.
The Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit’s Medicines Optimisation Team collaborated with the CCGs to develop a review tool which works with their existing patient records system, to enable a safe and consistent medication review process.
Patients received an initial telephone consultation offering advice and guidance, followed by a further consultation four weeks later to assess outcomes.
As a result of this work, across Greater Preston and Chorley and South Ribble CCGs:
- urinary incontinence medication reviews were carried out across 32 GP practices
- 238 patients were identified as being suitable and agreeable to taking a ‘drug holiday’
- an estimated annual NHS saving of £29,451 was recorded
- after four weeks, 144 patients (61%) did not restart drug treatment and their medication was discontinued
Delivering a programme pilot to improve medicines safety in care homes
By integrating pharmacists and pharmacy technicians into the wider primary care workforce and supporting patients in care homes, the NHS can relieve pressure on GPs and accident and emergency departments, and ensure best use of medicines, driving better value.
This is the basis of the Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH) programme, which the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (ML) was commissioned to pilot across The Black Country and West Birmingham Sustainability and Transformation Partnership.
MLCSU pharmacists worked as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide leadership on person-centred medicines optimisation. Several services were provided including 30-minute, in-depth, structured medication reviews, pharmacy technician led medicines waste audits and system reviews to support medicines safety
The pilot project generated actual drug cost efficiencies of more than £149,000 (excluding cost improvement from potential hospital admissions avoidance), with a saving per patient reviewed of £100. The service freed up on average 62 GP appointments per month (this excludes setup time, and pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic), plus time spent on processing 100 outpatient and 46 discharge letters.
More than £1,222 of avoidable waste was identified from waste medicine audits in 11 of the care homes.
The pharmacy technician provided training to improve repeat prescribing processes within care homes; supporting communication between care homes, GP practices and community pharmacy to embed the new way of working. Training also covered the 28-day medication cycle, expiry date guidance document and good practice on disposal of medicines.
Our people
We have a team of experienced experts across a range of disciplines, who are committed to finding the best solutions to improve health outcomes across the NHS.
Clinical
Tina Bramley, Associate Director, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Dr Olu Akinremi, Value Implementation Lead, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Jonathan Horgan (Ph), Director of Pharmacy Services, NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit
Rupesh Thakkar (Ph), Senior Clinical Pharmacist, NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit
Ian Morris (Ph), Senior Clinical Services Manager
Alex Evans
Consultancy
Rebecca Dennett, Programme Lead for Strategy and Partnering (Life Sciences), NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Ayesha Janjua, Associate Director – ICS Development, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Rose Taylor, Exec Director Health and Care Transformation, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Gary Graham, Director Strategy and Development, Health and Care Transformation, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Denis Gizzi
Rachel Helmn, Head of Consultancy – Growth Lead, North of England Commissioning Support
Analytics/Economics
Helen Duckworth, Director of Business Intelligence Transformation, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Jürgen Mitsch, Head of Data Science, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Andi Orlowski, Director, Health Economics Unit
David Sgorbati, Chief Analyst, Health Economics Unit
Ben Murch
Public health specialists
Claire Cheong-Leen, Associate Director SPH & Clinical Insight, NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands CSU
Richard Harrety, Senior Business Manager, North of England Commissioning Support
Gill D’eath (PHM)
Change management
Duncan Harper, Head of Midlands Region – Consultancy
Contact us
If you would like to know more about our work and how we can help you contact us at agem.strategicvaluepartnership@nhs.net.