Single national formulary pilot sites announced

NHS England has announced the first 13 integrated care boards (ICBs) that will become early adopter sites for the single national formulary (SNF).

In a blog published on 9 July 2026, NHS England said the 13 early adopter ICBs will “transition over to the new categories by December 2026” (see Box).

The remaining 13 ICBs will take up the new categorisation by July 2027, it continued.

In the blog, NHS England also announced the four therapy areas that will be incorporated into the SNF: chronic heart failure, type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults, ophthalmology and asthma.

The therapy areas were chosen because they “share large patient populations, significant public health and service burdens, and pathways with complex or inconsistent access to innovation”, it said.

The blog noted that the NHS will decide on the next set of therapy areas before the end of 2026, adding that the first SNF digital product will launch by July 2027, with between 8 and 12 therapy areas.

Currently, formularies are locally maintained documents that list medicines deemed suitable for prescribing within the local area. These are drawn up by locally constituted groups of clinicians from both secondary and primary care, with occasional commissioner or patient input.

In its ‘Fit for the future: ten-year health plan for England‘, published on 3 July 2025, the government promised a SNF for medicines within the next two years.

“[The SNF] aims to reduce variation caused by local formularies and remove barriers that can delay access to clinically and cost-effective treatments,” the blog said.

Ewan Maule, director of medicines at North East and North Cumbria ICB, commented: “I’m pleased to see the SNF making progress, and there is potential that, if this is done well, it could be an important step in helping to reduce variation in access to medicines.

“That said, a SNF on its own will not achieve that, and there is much work to be done about implementation at a local level. I am hopeful that the national team leading this work understand this and will engage local systems to ensure the national policy ambition doesn’t fail as a result of not understanding the post-formulary implementation process.

“The early implementer sites will be crucial to making this work succeed, and it’s a testament to the professionalism of ICB medicines optimisation teams that they are able to do this in the context of the ongoing and disruptive NHS reorganisation. But I am hopeful that patients will ultimately benefit from this work.”

Speaking at the Community Pharmacy and General Practice Conference, which was held in Birmingham, West Midlands, on 21–22 June 2026, Olivier Picard, chair of the National Pharmacy Association, warned that the introduction of a SNF risked making medicine shortages worse.

Although he said a national formulary would help bring “equality” to medicine availability, Picard added that it is “going to stop innovation, whether we like it or not”.

“The national formulary will restrict entry into the market, we’re already seeing problems with medicines not being available in certain parts of the country. I personally think that we [should] retain what we have,” he said.