Sheela Upadhyaya

Life Sciences Consultant – specialising in Rare Disease

Sheela Upadhyaya is a consultant to the life sciences industry and has played several roles in the rare disease space through her career. She is currently chair for Together for Rare Diseases, an initiative to support collaboration with ERNs and Industry to improve the landscape for research in rare diseases. She has also been the rare disease strategic advisor to NICE having previously been the 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 the healthcare ecosystem when trying to secure access for medicines for 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 the 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. Sheela has a passion for partnership working and believes that collaboration across the sector is the key to delivering high quality outcomes for all.