The National Medicines Value Forum 2026 – Afternoon presentations
Below are highlights of the afternoon presentations shared at PM Healthcare’s National Medicines Value Forum 2026.
Beyond Boundaries: Leveraging external resources to unlock capacity through strategic partnerships
(Presented by: Kalveer Flora, Lead Pharmacist Medicines Value and Biologics.)
At PM Healthcare’s National Medicines Value Forum 2026, Kalveer Flora described how strategic partnerships with partners can unlock clinical capacity and improve patient care.
The project addressed a common challenge: high-risk medicines often require regular blood monitoring, and delays or missed tests increase clinical risk, particularly in rheumatology (most conditions require blood monitoring for drugs).
Identified risk factors for non-adherence include socioeconomic and healthcare factors, complexity of treatment and polypharmacy, depression, lack of information, and RA meds tend to be slow acting.
The pilot implemented notifications via homecare providers to remind patients of upcoming blood tests, with confirmations sent back to the hospital team. Phase 1 results showed a 30% increase in timely blood tests, enabling faster prescription processing and reducing emergency interventions.
From January to June 2025, over 22,000 patients across 77 clinical areas benefited from these reminders, which have now been integrated into the Sciensus Intouch app. The initiative highlights how collaboration and targeted interventions can improve adherence, streamline services, and unlock clinical capacity.
The Future for Medicines Commissioning
(Presented by: Suzy Heafield, Pharmacist and Independent Healthcare Consultant, Millfield Healthcare Consultancy Limited.)
At PM Healthcare’s National Medicines Value Forum 2026, Suzy Heafield explored the future of medicines commissioning within a rapidly evolving NHS landscape.
Commissioning is a continuous process — from population health needs assessment and pathway design through to service specification, contracting and performance monitoring. With medicines representing the second highest area of NHS expenditure (around £21.6bn annually), ensuring medicines are fully embedded in commissioning decisions is critical, particularly as no additional in-year funding is provided to ICBs for new NICE-approved medicines.
Medicines are one part of a complex NHS system which is undergoing massive change. The 10 Year NHS Plan signals major shifts: hospital to community, sickness to prevention, and analogue to digital, alongside strategic commissioning and the proposed Single National Formulary (SNF). Structural reform — including the abolition of NHS England and the development of pan-ICB arrangements — adds further complexity.
By January 2026, ICBs were asked to set an overall five-year strategy. By March 2026, each ICB should produce an integrated needs assessment with a detailed understanding of the population served.
What does all this mean for the future of medicines commissioning? Medicines need to be included in ICB plans and Strategic Commissioning means looking at whole pathway, not individual medicines. Questions remain about the detail of the SNF and the eventual specialised commissioning pathway, and of course the final effect of the restructured system.
Building your resilience through an evolving NHS
(Presented by: Ivan Hollingsworth, Director, Centric Consultants Limited.)
Turmoil in the NHS has become almost ‘normalised’ for those working within the system. To build resilience, where can we focus to ensure we can leverage the most control over ourselves and a stressful environment?
As individuals in stressful and challenging situations we need to be able to negotiate the evolutionary triggers that throw us headfirst into a fight or flight spiral. Despite not being able to sidestep the survival stress response, we can learn how to manage ourselves in reaction to it.
Primary reactions – the self – are where we most exert control. The further out we go from our immediate self (the team or environment), the more difficult it is to exert agency.
Ivan proposed ‘4 Ps’ to enable a thinking response to stress:
1. Pause – the power to stop, take a moment – a gateway to dialling down whatever stresses are in front of us.
2. Process – noticing our emotional state to give us the data we need to understand our immediate reaction.
3. Plan – take the data from our process to pick the most effective and appropriate response – exercise, calming strategies, interactions with supportive colleagues, breathing exercises (see below).
4. Proceed – moving forward calmly and with intention, knowing the thinking part of your brain is engaged and that you can manage stressful triggers.
A takeaway tip from Ivan’s session:
Take a breath – try box breathing to gain control of a low level stressful trigger (e.g., walking into a meeting):
1. Sit upright, hands relaxed in your lap
2. Breathe in through the nose for a count of four.
3. Hold for four.
4. Breathe out for four.
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