How we work

The international market for healthcare is valued at approximately $4 trillion. There is a great deal of interest from other countries in NHS products, services and knowledge. NHS Global has already made substantial progress in several regions of commercial interest.

NHS Global works closely with UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), the best trade promotion organisation in the developed world. UKTI’s extensive trade networks bring new customers and investors to NHS organisations, dramatically increasing the commercial opportunities available. NHS Global and UKTI activity can currently be defined as two distinct strategies:

• Major “Government to Government” engagement on behalf of UK plc, bringing together the NHS and commercial sector to work in collaboration to pitch for, and deliver, substantial country-wide programmes of healthcare implementation, improvement and provision e.g. the current activity in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, supported by the Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries signed by the Secretary of State for Health in 2011
• Individual commercial opportunities for NHS Providers, examples of which would include establishing healthcare partnerships between international providers, professional exchange programmes, delivery of education and training programmes, marketing and selling of intellectual property and other goods and services of commercial value, and establishing provision of services in international markets.

Further activity

The demand for NHS expertise from the international healthcare community is strong. NHS Global is establishing itself as the first point of contact for governments and healthcare providers who wish to engage with the NHS.

NHS Global and foundation trusts

We want to rapidly increase the hospital to hospital activity, focusing on the potential for bilateral agreements between NHS trusts and healthcare institutions overseas. This will run alongside the broader proof of concept work NHS Global is currently undertaking on a government to government basis with Saudi Arabia.

We are now working to create a network of UK Foundation Trusts and other relevant healthcare providers who are interested and able to pursue the international opportunities that we are identifying.

Membership of NHS Global will be a gateway to further opportunities as well as organisational-level support to identify and develop goods and services fit for the international market.

“I fully support the latest plans for development of NHS Global. It will provide precisely the sort of “light touch” infrastructure, support, and safeguards which will enable NHS organisations like Sheffield Teaching Hospitals to optimise our international offer. We are also very much in favour of the philanthropic element of the package, which chimes with work we are already doing to support a hospital system in Tigre province in Ethiopia. We are keen to see NHS Global up and running without delay.” Andrew Cash - Chief Executive Sheffield Teaching Hospitals FT

To Find out more, please contact us.