Chris Whitehouse, a public affairs consultant and expert on medical technology policy and regulation at Whitehouse Communications, reports on progress in the delivery of value based procurement and warns that industry must urgently step up its preparations.
Value based procurement (VBP) will be delivered across the NHS in England in the imminent future, but some MedTech sectors are not yet sufficiently prepared for its impact and so risk missing out on the opportunities it could present.
Officials from the Department of Health and Social Care are advising that the feedback from pilot studies being conducted using the new VBP assessment methodology proposed to be issued across the NHS in England is showing that it works, and that it should deliver the benefits for patients and NHS spending that government ministers want to see. But, despite repeated initiatives to highlight the need for suppliers to demonstrate evidence that their products can deliver improvements in patient and other impacts, many suppliers have not yet engaged and begun to develop case studies to demonstrate the efficacy of their products. This lack of an evidence base in some product categories was highlighted recently by a NICE Late Stage Assessment project.
Formal evaluation of the pilot VBP projects will take place between late March and early April, and the guidance is scheduled to be published for widespread use across the NHS in England in early June.
It is welcome that there will be an industry readiness survey launched in mid-February to understand what support companies need from the government to prepare for the adoption of the new methodology, for example if additional training is required and if there are any additional implementation considerations.
There will also be an industry engagement workshop in April to discuss evidence requirements and validation. It is crucial that the evidence requirements allow for “real world” evidence derived from case studies conducted with the NHS and other care providers rather than requiring double-blind clinical trials.
Such preparatory work with industry by DHSC officials is to be welcomed, but similar intensive initiatives need to continue to be driven forward not only with the NHS procurement functions, but also with its finance directors who have overall sight of whole system costs, and without whose full and active engagement the full potential of VBP might not be realised.
But, at the heart of all this work should be a focus on patient experiences and outcomes. If VBP does not deliver improvements in the quality of patient life and in the outcomes of their treatments then it will have failed, something which no one wants to see happen. Patient advocacy organisations need to be fully involved in an ongoing dialogue, indefinitely in the future as a default part of the procurement process, so that they can express the concerns and priorities of patients whose voice otherwise risks going unheard.
Clinicians also have a key role to play in speaking for their patients and in shaping the procurement process by defining the specific improvements in patient experience and outcomes, along with reductions in required treatment episodes, that the procurement of medical devices should deliver.
This will be an exciting year for delivery of VBP, but there remains a huge task of work ahead for DHSC officials, for the NHS and for the MedTech sector across the board if its full potential is to be realised.
I will be leading an expert and influential panel session on value based procurement and its rollout at Med-Tech Expo 2026 in Birmingham in early June, full details to be announced soon.
The Author used AI in preparing this article. Comments upon or questions about this article can be addressed to chris.whitehouse@whitehousecomms.com.
