The policy report summarises insights and recommendations from the Global Policy Network's UK Medicines Policy Series roundtable held on June 25, 2025. The session, titled "The Role of Medicines in the 10-Year Plan," brought together senior pharmacy and academic leaders to discuss how pharmacy can support the NHS 10-Year Plan's three key transitions: from treatment to prevention, acute to community care, and analogue to digital systems. Pharmacy has a strategic role in these shifts, but systemic,

cultural, and operational barriers must be overcome to realise its full potential. 

 

Delegates collectively emphasised that pharmacy must no longer be seen as a peripheral or transactional service. Alternatively, it should be repositioned as a foundational pillar of integrated care delivery, capable of supporting system transformation, improving

health outcomes and reducing pressure on overstretched services. A series of recommendations is set out in this report, directed towards NHS England, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Integrated Care Boards (ICB). These include mandating senior pharmacy representation on ICB boards, advancing digital integration, investing in workforce development and establishing a unified national pharmacy voice like the British Medical Association (BMA), to improve policy influence,  contract negotiation, and strategic alignment across the profession. Achieving the goals of the NHS 10-Year Plan requires bold leadership, structural change and a fundamental cultural shift. Pharmacy professionals need to be fully supported and strategically embedded at the ICB level and within NHSE and DHSC to be at the forefront of medicines and NHS transformation. 

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This report is highly necessary and timely because it moves beyond high-level ambitions to tackle practical blockers across governance, independent prescribing readiness, interoperability, funding and supply and siloed working. The report also sets out concrete, system-level actions not fully covered in the Darzi Review or Pharmacy First, turning national intent into delivery.