A Common Understanding 2025

6.Routes and definitions

Any project where a pharmaceutical company, or companies, works alongside the NHS and potentially other organisations must involve, and be able to demonstrate, the pooling of skills, experience and/or resources from all the parties involved. There must be a shared commitment to successful delivery, with each organisation making a significant contribution.

Many pharmaceutical companies that are not members of the ABPI have also agreed to comply with the ABPI Code and accept the jurisdiction of the PMCPA.

This guidance is based on the latest version of the ABPI Code of Practice, published in 2024, which contains clauses in recognition that some projects may not deliver a direct benefit to patients and, as such, did not meet the definition of joint working set out in previous iterations of the Code prior to 2021.

Two definitions in the 2024 ABPI Code are relevant to this update of the 2025 Common Understanding document:

• Collaborative working refers to pharmaceutical companies working with other organisations to deliver initiatives which either enhance patient care or are for the benefit of patients or alternatively benefit the NHS and, as a minimum, maintain patient care. Further details are given in Clause 20 of the ABPI Code. Collaborative working is generally between one or more pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organisations and possibly other organisations.
• Joint working is a limited form of collaborative working as set out in Clause 20.4 of the ABPI Code. Joint working is between one or more pharmaceutical companies and the NHS (and possibly others). Joint working must be patient centred and always benefit patients.

The full wording of the ABPI Code, including Clause 20 (Collaborative Working with Organisations), its subclauses and supplementary information, is available online.¹¹

For the purposes of this document, we have solely used the term collaborative working.