Sheela Upadhyaya joins FIPRA as Special Advisor for Healthcare

Sheela Upadhyaya has joined FIPRA International as a Special Advisor in its Healthcare practice. 

“It’s a pleasure and honour to contribute to FIPRA’s dynamic healthcare practice,” Sheela said of her appointment.

“I have a passion for working in partnerships. Collaboration across sectors is the key to delivering high quality outcomes for all, now more so than ever,” she added. 

Sheela has worked as an Associate Director of the Highly Specialised Technology programme at the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) since 2015, responsible for running the programme to evaluate medicines and technologies for rare and ultra-rare conditions for commissioning in the National Health Service (NHS). 

Prior to joining NICE, Sheela commissioned rare and ultra-orphan disease services in the NHS, delivering improvements through collaborating with industry, clinicians and patient groups.  

Sheela sits on the board of the World Orphan Drug Congress, and has participated in several European projects such as ORPH-VAL European Working Group for Value Assessment and Funding Processes in Rare Diseases, working on its nine principles to help improve the consistency of Orphan Medicinal Products (OMP) pricing and reimbursement (P&R) assessment.

Sheela was also part of the TRUST4RD tool designed to guide policy makers, health technology assessment (HTA) authorities, regulators and payers on a collaborative approach to optimise real-world evidence (RWE) and develop guidance on novel approaches to appraise OMPs.

Sheela has co-authored several papers discussing HTA methods for assessing the value of orphan medicines and has presented at many conference panels on the subject. 

Sheela has a passion for partnership working and believes that collaboration across the sector is the key to delivering high quality outcomes for all.