June 2025 • PharmaTimes Magazine • 24-25
// LEADERSHIP //
Taking off together
Leadership in partnership working – from alignment to action
As healthcare in the UK enters a new phase of integrated care, partnership working is no longer optional – it is essential.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the evolving relationship between the NHS and the life sciences industry, including healthtech, where the stakes are high, the landscape complex and the opportunity to improve lives significant.
In a sector defined by innovation, evidence and outcomes, the true catalyst for transformation is often overlooked: relationships. We cannot deliver lasting change across life sciences and healthcare without investing in the human side of collaboration – shared values, trust and courageous leadership.
The growing momentum behind NHS-industry collaboration is cause for optimism. From shared data environments to tech-enabled care pathways and real-world evidence generation, we have the building blocks for high-impact partnerships. Yet despite widespread consensus on the need for collaboration, many partnerships still falter.
Why? Because partnership is not a project – it’s a mindset. And the key to unlocking its full potential lies in leadership.
Leadership as the enabler of trust
At the heart of every successful NHS-industry partnership is trust. Trust that both sides are working towards shared objectives. Trust that transparency will be met with openness. Trust that doing the right thing for patients can align with doing the right thing for business.
But trust doesn’t happen by accident – it is built by leaders who prioritise it. Leaders who make space for different voices at the table, who foster shared accountability and who aren’t afraid to challenge outdated assumptions.
One way I have seen this work is by reframing partnerships around shared outcomes rather than individual outputs. When both NHS and industry partners are held accountable for improving patient outcomes, system sustainability or health equity, the focus shifts from ‘what’s in it for me’ to ‘what’s possible together.’
This isn’t easy – but it is transformative.
Baroness Dido Harding, former Chair of NHS Improvement, encapsulated this when she said: “When partnerships work, it’s because leadership sets a culture of trust, accountability and shared goals from the top – not because of contracts or governance structures.”
This cultural foundation is especially important when organisations come from different sectors, with different incentives, languages and operating norms. Bridging those divides takes active leadership – not just seniority, but the ability to set tone, pace and purpose across boundaries.
Partnership by design, not default
When partnerships between the NHS and the life sciences industry succeed, the results are powerful. Take the NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative, which brought together NHS England, NICE, MHRA and industry partners to fast-track promising health technologies – providing over 1.2 million patients access to proven innovations and 1,950 innovations receiving support.
Or the Life Sciences Vision, which explicitly recognises the role of partnership in achieving health and economic goals.
But for every success story, there are examples of slow uptake, siloed delivery or stalled progress due to misalignment. These missteps often stem from cultural and strategic disconnects, rather than technical or contractual barriers.
‘At the heart of every successful NHS-industry partnership is trust. Trust that both sides are working towards shared objectives’
That’s why leadership must move beyond transactional collaboration to embed partnership as a core competency – something that is intentional, strategic and values-led.
Jon Rouse, former Chief Officer of Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, observed: “The only way we’ve achieved this is through leaders across organisations choosing collaboration over competition, every day.”
Partnerships succeed when leaders do the work of aligning visions, surfacing risks early, co-creating solutions and ensuring that every party has a stake – and a voice – in success.
Empowering leadership at all levels
Leaders in both the NHS and industry now face pressure not just to talk about collaboration, but to deliver on it. The question is how to do that in practice – and at pace?
Strategic alignment must be followed by operational clarity. That means agreeing not just on what the partnership is trying to achieve, but also how success will be measured, how conflicts will be resolved and how impact will be sustained.
It also means recognising that the speed and scale of partnership work varies across systems. Integrated Care Systems may be at different maturity stages, with differing levels of appetite and capability for collaboration with the life sciences sector.
Leadership requires being responsive to this variation – building trust where it’s fragile and moving quickly where momentum exists.
Crucially, this leadership needs to be distributed. While senior executives set the tone, partnerships are delivered by people at every level – from clinicians and researchers to procurement and policy teams. Equipping leaders at all levels with the tools, confidence and relationships to work across sectors is essential.
Creating a culture of shared learning
One of the most powerful ways to accelerate partnership working is by creating a culture of shared learning. Too often, successful collaborations remain under the radar or fail to translate beyond their original context.
The life sciences sector and NHS alike need spaces where they can share not just outcomes, but process: what worked; what didn’t and why. Leaders should reward learning, not just results – especially when working in complex, adaptive systems.
Embedding learning also requires courage. Courage to share failures, to challenge assumptions and to acknowledge when collaboration isn’t working.
That’s why psychological safety is a critical enabler of strong partnerships. Leaders need to create environments where openness is the norm and continuous improvement is expected.
Leadership that reflects the world we serve
Effective partnership working also requires leadership that reflects the diversity of the communities it serves. Representation in decision-making builds trust, drives relevance and unlocks new perspectives on how care is delivered and improved.
We need more inclusive leadership – not just in demographic terms, but in leadership style and approach. Leadership grounded in authenticity, lived experience and emotional intelligence is essential to the future of life sciences and healthtech.
When we lead with curiosity, compassion and a genuine commitment to impact, we change not just systems – but hearts and minds.
This inclusive leadership is especially vital in areas where mistrust or disengagement has historically been high. In these contexts, authentic partnership can only happen when leaders bring humility, respect and a commitment to co-creation.
Raising the bar: launching the EHP Awards
To celebrate and promote the value of partnership working, Visions4Health has partnered with PM Group to launch a new awards programme – Excellence in Healthcare Partnerships (EHP) Awards: ‘Transforming Patient Care Together’.
This new initiative has four core aims:
- To establish partnership working as a cornerstone for improving patient outcomes
- To build trust between the NHS and the life sciences industry, challenging historic scepticism
- To accelerate adoption of collaborative working by showcasing best practice
- To build capabilities and competencies in partnership working across the system.
By recognising excellence in action, we hope to inspire others, elevate the standard of collaboration and help embed partnership into the fabric of UK healthcare delivery.
The EHP Awards will launch in June 2025 and culminate in a networking and awards ceremony on 5 February 2026.
To find out more and enter the awards, visit ehpawards.com
Roshani Perera is Commercial and Operations Director at Visions4Health
PharmaTimes
PharmaTimes is the UK’s leading pharmaceutical magazine, tracking the trends and issues that affect the industry here in the UK, in Europe and across the world. We deliver independent, authoritative and trustworthy content through impartial, balanced and informed opinion and analysis.