Blog series #1: Pharma’s role in enabling sustainable healthcare

This blog explores why collaboration between these partners is essential and how pharma can help innovations bridge the gap to unlock the system-wide adoption necessary to secure healthcare’s sustainable future.

To anchor the series in real-world experience, we spoke with multiple innovation industry leaders who are responsible for driving digital transformation and value-based partnerships

This article marks the first instalment of a three-part series, in which we explore:

1. How industry can support innovations that enable sustainable healthcare
2. The value that industry can create across the healthcare ecosystem
3. The actions stakeholders should take to make these solutions work in practice

WHY IS THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION SO URGENT?

The pressures facing healthcare systems are mounting and clearly visible in both data and daily experiences. Aging populations¹, chronic diseases², workforce shortages³, and stunted productivity⁴ are converging to push health services to the brink.

• The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) estimates that EU healthcare systems currently operate with a deficit of 4.2 million healthcare professionals⁵.
• In the UK, public satisfaction with the NHS has dropped to a record low; just 24% of people are satisfied with services⁶, driven by factors like long waits, staff shortages (47% of nursing shifts are understaffed⁷), and lack of funding.
• In the US, healthcare spending is now outpacing GDP and is on track to exceed 20% of the economy by 2030⁸.

The combined weight of these pressures make the urgency for systemic transformation unmistakable.

“If care does not radically transform, society’s expectations will increasingly outrun what the system can deliver. (industry expert)”

HOW DO WE DEFINE SUSTAINABLE HEALTHCARE?

Before exploring how innovation can sustain healthcare, we must first define ‘sustainable healthcare’. In this context, we are not looking explicitly at environmental sustainability but rather at optimising across the three core aims of sustainable healthcare to ensure: 1) better patient relevant outcomes 2) Increased productivity, and 3) higher caregiver satisfaction (Figure 1). Doing this will ensure that the volume of care requirements can be addressed without spiralling costs or reduced quality.

Today, productivity is one of the most important KPIs. If we can’t increase the productivity of caregivers, the healthcare system will be unaffordable, but also there will be worsening healthcare shortages and gaps in patient access.

One expert highlighted “there is a workforce shortage and costs have risen, so sustainability now has to mean the system’s ability to keep up with growth through mounting productivity gains”

THE TRANSFORMATIVE ROLE OF HEALTHTECH INNOVATION

Digitalisation has moved healthcare forward; diagnostics are faster, records are more accessible, and new care models are emerging. But transformation so far has been “partial and patchy”, held back by fragmented systems, isolated pilots, and data silos. Genuine change will only come when digital systems are truly integrated, with data and workflows spanning both teams and settings.

That’s where AI/ML offers game-changing potential. Enabled by cheaper and more powerful computing, AI tools can analyse huge complex datasets, find patterns, automate workflows, and enable proactive interventions. AI is the “intelligence layer” that can turn basic digitisation into coordinated, system-level decision-making.

As shown in Figure 2, expert insights covered some of the most important ways in which innovation can deliver impact to care through new levels of efficiency, accuracy, and personalisation.

WHY HEALTHTECH INNOVATION IS STRUGGLING TO SCALE

Despite the promise, 80-90% of HealthTech startups fail in the long run, with ~60% failing within 5 years^9-11. High failure rates are not the only issue, even validated products that make it to the market face headwinds when scaling. The experience of Pacmed¹² illustrates the challenge; their ICU decision-support tool achieves 10–15% fewer readmissions and reduces average length of stay by 1–5%¹³. This is widely considered a huge success, but even so, uptake is limited to a selection of hospitals in the (small) Dutch healthcare system.

Innovators are agile and experts in technology, but few have the resources, expertise, or ecosystem access to get their solutions adopted at scale¹⁴. Common capability and resource gaps include:

• Customer & market understanding – Limited real-world insight into customer needs and market dynamics often leads to poor workflow integration and slow adoption of new solutions
• Stakeholder engagement – A narrow network and low trust among key groups including hospital leaders, healthcare providers, payers, and regulators hinders all phases of the product development life cycle
• Product validation & evidence generation – Lack of experience and operational capacity to generate robust, clinically relevant evidence to meet regulatory and customer needs
• Regulatory & compliance – Insufficient understanding of regulatory & compliance requirements and limited experience navigating related processes for market approval
• Commercialisation & market access – Limited sales and payer negotiation expertise, combined with a poor understanding of regional reimbursement and adoption pathways, creates major barriers to commercialisation and market penetration
• Financial resources – Insufficient capital to mitigate and overcome potential development roadblocks or delays reduces the ability to sustain development and scale effectively

Compounding this, the common system-wide challenges persist:

• Fragmented infrastructure: Data siloes and lack of interoperability challenge seamless rollout
• Financial constraints: Hospitals, often operating on razor-thin margins (like those in the Netherlands, with just 1–2% above breakeven¹⁵), lack resources to invest in (often unproven) tech
• Regulatory & evidence burdens: Proving value is expensive and slow, especially as standards for digital endpoints are only just emerging. Additionally, access to health data for model training & validation is significantly constrained by data silos, privacy regulations, and security concerns related to patient information
• Workforce shortage: The workforce challenge that HealthTech aims to solve is now a limiting factor; with chronic staffing gaps, many doctors and nurses are under such pressure that there is little time, bandwidth or mindset left to trial innovations, drive transformation or upskill staff
• End-user hesitation: Care providers may be reluctant to adopt new technologies due to uncertainty about their benefits or perceived disruption to established workflows

The result? Promising tools too often stall at the pilot stage, failing to cross the chasm from innovation to everyday practice, not because they lack potential but because they lack the right partners, expertise and support

“Digitisation is the first step – you need data platforms and digital tools to even consider using AI. But the leap is when you apply intelligence to that data, discovering relationships, making predictions, and automating decisions that humans alone cannot manage at scale.”

WHY PHARMA IS THE IDEAL PARTNER TO ENABLE INNOVATORS

Pharma’s vertically integrated business model already positions it as a natural catalyst for turning breakthrough ideas into system-wide solutions. The benefits of leveraging pharma capabilities for innovation are three-fold:

1. Lower failure rate
2. Reduced time-to-market
3. Faster scaling

Pharma excels at leveraging deep market knowledge to successfully identify promising early-stage discoveries, often partnering with universities and biotech firms conducting fundamental research. They support these concepts through early R&D and rigorous clinical trials, generate robust evidence, make the case for reimbursement, and ultimately launch proven therapies at scale.

This same end-to-end expertise is exactly what HealthTech innovation needs (as shown in Figure 3).

• Integrated R&D to market pipeline: Pharma routinely manages complex, multi-year development programs involving thousands of stakeholders across discovery, clinical trials, regulatory affairs, and commercialisation
• Effective multi-stakeholder engagement: The pharma business model requires coordinating and mobilizing hospitals, physicians, payers, regulators, and patients – the same ecosystem HealthTech innovation needs
• Evidence generation at scale: Pharma conducts global clinical studies generating regulatory-grade evidence that convinces critical payers and providers
• Risk-tolerant investment model: Comfortable with long timelines, high upfront costs, and uncertain outcomes
• Global operational reach: Once proven, pharma can launch solutions across multiple countries and health systems simultaneously

CONCLUSION: A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE NEEDS PHARMA

Productivity is one of the most important indicators in healthcare today. To ensure sustainability, productivity KPIs must underpin and inform all strategic decisions, making improvements in productivity a central pillar of effective healthcare delivery. While global measurement remains inconsistent, momentum is building; for example, the UK NHS is advancing robust methods for tracking care productivity ¹⁶, a focus that must accelerate worldwide.

Innovation holds exceptional promise for driving these productivity gains, but for HealthTech breakthroughs to move from the lab to frontline care, pharma must step forward as a strategic enabler. But this is not the only requirement for success – we also need coordinated collaboration with healthcare providers themselves. This is critical to ensure solutions work in real clinical settings, deliver genuine patient benefit and are adopted at scale.

1. For innovators, this three-way partnership is the fastest route to meaningful impact by bridging capability gaps, proving clinical value, and navigating complex adoption pathways
2. For pharma, it’s an opportunity to evolve from traditional supplier to strategic orchestrator, driving system-wide value while securing long-term market relevance
3. For healthcare providers, it’s access to trusted, clinically-validated tools that relieve pressure rather than add to it, backed by the evidence and support needed for confident adoption

The future of sustainable healthcare isn’t just about pharma stepping up, it’s about all three partners stepping up together. Only through this triangle of collaboration can we build resilient health systems capable of meeting tomorrow’s demands while delivering better care today.

HOW VINTURA CAN HELP

At Vintura, we can help orchestrate these important partnerships to ensure success. We bring deep expertise in stakeholder alignment, operational change management, and strategic transformation to support your organisation’s journey, from facilitating neutral, strategic partnerships, to designing collaborative governance and business models, to navigating the cultural shifts needed for sustainable change.

We invite you to reach out and share your experiences, challenges, and insights.  Let’s connect and feel free to reach out to Bas Amesz or Peter Blanshard. Explore how we can work together to unlock the system-wide adoption necessary for healthcare’s sustainable future.

Your perspective matters: join the conversation and help shape the path forward.

Our blogs in this series

This article is the first instalment of a three-part series, in which we explored:

Blog #1 How industry can support innovations that enable sustainable healthcare

Blog #2 The value that industry can create across the healthcare ecosystem

Blog # 3 The actions stakeholders should take to make these solutions work in practice

REFERENCES

1. Jones, C.H., & Dolsten, M. 2024. Healthcare on the brink: navigating the challenges of an aging society in the United States. NPJ Aging, 10(1):22. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10998868/

2. NIHCM Foundation. 2025. The Growing Burden of Chronic Diseases. Available at: https://nihcm.org/publications/the-growing-burden-of-chronic-diseases

3. World Health Organization. 2025. Health Workforce. Available at: https://www.who.int/health-topics/health-workforce#tab=tab_1

4. The King’s Fund. 2025. NHS productivity: Data and analysis. Available at: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/productivity-nhs-health-care-sector

5. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. 2025. Consolidated Annual Activity Report 2024. Stockholm: ECDC. Available at: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/consolidated-annual-activity-report-2024

6. The King’s Fund. 2024. Public satisfaction with the NHS and social care in 2023 – Results from the British Social Attitudes survey. Available at: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/reports/public-satisfaction-nhs-social-care-2023

7. Royal College of Nursing. 2024. State of the Profession Report. Available at: https://www.rcn.org.uk/-/media/Royal-College-Of-Nursing/Documents/Publications/2024/May/011-484.pdf

8. Pearl, R. 2025. These 3 medical trends predict a massive healthcare crisis. Forbes Magazine. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2025/07/21/these-3-medical-trends-predict-a-massive-healthcare-crisis/

9. Ghosh, S., & Lu, Y. 2023. The digital health landscape in Europe. NPJ Digital Medicine, 6:151. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10668566/

10. Statista. 2025. Digital Health – Statistics & Facts. Available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/2409/digital-health/#topicOverview

11. Spdload. 2024. Startup Success Rate: Statistics and Insights. Available at: https://spdload.com/blog/startup-success-rate/

12. Pacmed. 2025. Company and product overview. Available at: https://www.pacmed.ai/

13. Eli5. 2025. Case Study: Pacmed Critical ICU AI. Available at: https://www.eli5.io/case-studies/pacmed-critical-icu-ai-case-study

14. Valloppillil, S. 2025. AI in Pharma: Startups, VCs And Big Tech Are Reshaping the industry. Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sindhyavalloppillil/2025/07/17/ai-in-pharma-era-where-big-tech-leads-startups-scale-and-incumbents-strategize/

15. FD.nl. 2025. Investeringsruimte ziekenhuizen blijft krimpen. Available at: https://fd.nl/samenleving/1557952/investeringsruimte-ziekenhuizen-blijft-krimpen

16. NHS Arden & GEM Commissioning Support Unit. 2025. Measuring Productivity in Health Care: Technical Report. Available at: https://www.ardengemcsu.nhs.uk/media/4387/measuring-productivity-in-health-care-final-report-2025.pdf