Sheela Upadhyaya has played several roles in the rare disease space through her career. He most recent has been rare disease strategic advisor at. She was previously Associate Director Highly Specialised Technology program, responsible for running the program to evaluate medicines and technologies for rare and ultra-rare conditions for commissioning in the NHS. She has extensive experience in understanding the issues that face companies and other stakeholders when trying to secure access for medicines for the orphan and ultra-orphan conditions. These include developing innovative access arrangements in liaison with industry, clinicians, patients and the NHS.
Sheela has co-authored several papers that discuss HTA methods for assessing value of orphan medicines and presented at many conference issue panels on the subject.
Prior to joining NICE, she commissioned rare and ultra-orphan disease services in the NHS delivering improvements through collaborating with industry, clinicians and patient groups. During that time, she successfully decommissioned failing services and seamlessly transferred the care of patients to better quality services.
Sheela has a passion for partnership working and believes that collaboration across the sector is the key to delivering high quality outcomes for all.