Our Partnerships

Enhancing UK Healthcare

At Lilly, we strongly believe in working closely with a variety of partners across the UK healthcare system to ensure patients get access to the most effective new medicines as fast as possible.

Whether it involves pioneering research into new therapies, working with patient advocacy groups, or supporting clinical service delivery through patient-centered Joint Working projects, we are immensely proud of our work supporting the NHS.

We believe that collaboration and partnership between the NHS, government, industry, academia and patient advocacy groups is essential to discovering and developing long-term solutions that support a twenty first century health service
JYUN YAN YANGSenior Medical Director, Lilly UK & Northern Europe

Research Partnerships

Research collaborations are vital to our process of discovery. We are proud to be part of more than 106 research collaborations across the UK, working collaboratively with academic institutions to discover and develop innovative life-saving treatments.

We are one of the founding members of the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) which is focused entirely on discovering and developing novel therapies for dementia, including Alzheimer’s research. For us, participating in the DDF builds on our company’s own 30-plus year commitment to research in Alzheimer’s disease.

We are also supporting the Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP), a consortium being led by the UKRI (Medical Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) and Versus Arthritis. Lilly is committed to working in partnership with the APDP to improve understanding of the complexity of pain, with the aim of helping people across the UK living with chronic and debilitating conditions.

Lilly supports the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the largest private-public biomedical partnership in the world. We are currently participating in 33 projects, including leading or co-ordinating eight projects covering neurodegeneration, pain, oncology, diabetes, immunology, translational safety and digital health.

Learn more about Lilly’s Scientific Partnering and areas of interest.

Collaborative Working Projects

Collaborative Working Projects are a specific type of partnership between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry, which aim to improve the efficiency and delivery of patient care at a local level.

We are proud to be involved in a number of Collaborative Working Projects across the UK, focused on helping people who are living with diabetes, cancer, immunological conditions, pain and neurodegeneration. Our projects have delivered bespoke innovative solutions which are making a real difference to patients' lives, including the advancement of the delivery of virtual dermatological consultations and working to significantly reduce the time cancer patients spend in outpatient chemotherapy clinics.

HSJ Partnership Awards 2020: Highly Commended Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS

Invest to Save: Prudent prescribing of human versus analogue insulin.

Eli Lilly & Company and Cardiff & Vale University Health Board

Over a thirty-four month period Cardiff & Vale UHB and Lilly worked in partnership on a community invest to save, insulin optimisation, project which has demonstrated sustained improvements in HbA1c with an average reduction of 14.9 mmol/mol in the patients optimised. Patients are educated and self-empowered, which has improved satisfaction and delivers care closer to home. The project has also yielded a medicines saving of £531,831 (June’19) compared to baseline. The overall success of this project has exceeded expectations, is cost saving to the UHB and provided sustainable funding for community nurse specialists.

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Our Completed Collaborative Working Projects

: In 2018, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated their treatment standards for metastatic soft tissue sarcoma (STS). The new regimen involved the addition of a new chemotherapy drug to the existing standard single agent therapy, requiring patients to spend more time in hospital receiving treatment. Lilly UK collaborated with the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre on a joint project which identified a need to improve the efficiency and patient experience of the chemotherapy service and minimise the time patients would spend attending the clinic.

Working together, we identified areas for service improvement and implemented a new nurse-led service to provide care from a single specialist nurse. The new service was able to reduce patients’ time in hospital by an average of 53.6%, saving patients an average of 4 hours 34 minutes per visit. The partnership not only improved patients’ experience and care but also resulted in efficiencies for the centre as empowering nurses to lead the system reduced the time required from other members of staff.

Learn more from publications by PharmaField and PharmaTimes .

: Lilly is currently working with Newcastle Upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust on the MySkinSelfie mobile phone app for skin self-monitoring. The app is used to support photographic skin self-monitoring between patients and their clinician. The app was designed and built by Newcastle Hospital NHS Trust in collaboration with the OpenLab for human computer interaction, based at Newcastle University School of Computing Science.

In a recent study of urgent and non-urgent skin cancer referrals in Bristol and Newcastle, it was found that patient uptake of the MySkinSelfie app nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic (51% compared to 26%). The app provided an effective alternative that reduced face-to-face visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiding remote consultations and diagnosis in both centres. The app reduced face-to-face appointments by 58% for basal cell carcinoma referrals compared to before the pandemic, and by 63% for two-week-wait skin cancer referrals during the pandemic. Phone applications and digital technology such as MySkinSelfie provide easily implementable cost-saving measures that keep patients out of hospital and free up clinical capacity.

Learn more in this retrospective review.

: A team of healthcare professionals from across Wales worked with academic staff at Swansea University to develop an education app for patients with diabetes. The project was supported by Lilly UK under a joint working agreement. The free to download app helps patients on insulin therapy check for injection site reactions and learn how to manage them.

The idea for the app came from healthcare professionals who were concerned that this essential check was being neglected during the switch to remote consultations because of COVID-19. Following successful testing within Wales, the app is now being rolled out across the UK. More details can be found at https://clinicathome.swan.ac.uk/

See publications from the Diabetes Times and Diabetes Wales here.

: Lilly UK and NHS Devon jointly developed the ProActive Diabetes Register Management (PARM), a simple to use clinical data tool, which uses practice-level data to enable the quick and easy identification of diabetes patients who most need intervention and a multidisciplinary approach to care. The tool works by identifying the most appropriate cohort of patients in their catchment area to be reviewed by clinicians. This supports more patients to manage their own health, be discharged from secondary care faster and be given the right level of support from their practice. Equally, it provides multi-disciplinary teams with valuable educational tools to manage more complex patients in primary care settings. The excel-based tool is free to use and has been successfully rolled out across Devon, Cornwall, parts of Kent, and North West London.

Learn more from publications by Business & Industry and The Telegraph.

: City Hospitals Sunderland approached Lilly UK for support while implementing a new meditech IT system into clinical practice. By providing a specialist nurse to monitor the system, enabling patients with diabetes to reviewed and / or triaged by a diabetes specialist, the project achieved its primary aims of reducing inpatient stays, costs and bed days.

Learn more about the project from PharmaTimes.

: The diabetes team at Gartnavel Hospital were aware that acute management of in-hospital hypoglycaemia could be improved. Under a joint working project with Lilly, the project team identified multiple opportunities for intervention to reduce the recurrence of inpatient hypoglycaemia. The project concluded that proactive specialist advice triggered by remote review could reduce the burden of hypoglycaemia, but therapy changes might be better made by a specialist team directly rather than just being advised.

Learn more about the study here.

Our Current Collaborative Working Projects

Lewisham Diabetes Optimisation Project

Diabetes Self Check Project with Swansea Bay

Slough PCN Insulin Mentorship for Clinical Pharmacists

: New Models of Complex Adjuvant Care in Patients with early Breast Cancer

‘Best to PEST’* Multi-disciplinary & Multi-specialty Psoriatic Arthritis Project * Psoriasis Epidemiological Screening Tool. Reviewed May 2020

If you would like to learn more about our Joint Working Projects, please get in touch with our UK Public Affairs team.

Reports and Publications

Our recent report on improving outcomes for people living with long-term conditions includes recommendations for system changes to improve diagnosis and management.

People-Centred Care: Download the Report

Following a roundtable held with AHSNs, we published a report on fostering greater joint working between the NHS and industry.

Read the report

In 2019, Lilly published a report setting out our commitment to partnership working and outlining recommendations to improve cross-sector collaboration.

The Next Wave of Health Innovation: Powered by Partnerships

Partnering with Patient Advocacy Groups

What is a Patient Advocacy Group (PAG)?

Patient advocacy groups are non-profit organisations whose mission is to improve the lives of people with a specific disease or medical condition.

Lilly’s Commitment to PAGs

Lilly is passionate about fostering strong, genuine relationships with patient organisations. We are committed to working in partnership to better understand the experiences of patients and their loved ones, and support projects to improve their treatment and care.

To learn more about Payments to Patient Advocacy Groups and Payments to Healthcare Organisations, please view our Transparency Reports.

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Lilly in the United Kingdom

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Lilly's Milestones

Our History of Caring and Discovery

PP-MG-GB-0297 December 2021