With another year almost gone it’s time once again to look back at how the pharma and healthcare industries have fared over the last 12 months.

Despite a lot of upheaval last year, it’s clear that there are still promising times ahead for the industry, even though there will be plenty of hurdles to overcome along the way. You can read in-depth thoughts from some of PharmaTimes’ best writers in our Review of the Year feature on p22 – which includes analysis of the NHS’ transformation over 2017, new government policies, the rise of AI in pharma, and trends in M&A.

But it’s always important to look forwards as well as backwards, and so this issue is also chock full of articles on topics that look likely to become big talking points in 2018 – such as the rise of flexible working in pharma (p16) and how patent litigation might change in an era of personalised medicines (p20). We also take a look at the growing need for more efficiencies in clinical trials on p32.

Finally on p38 we celebrate the winners of this year’s Marketer of the Year competition, and on p40 National Market Access Lead of the Year winner Gawain Shirley gives us his perspective on the UK’s market access landscape.

I hope you enjoy the issue.