As the polls tighten and June’s general election starts to seem very close indeed, we’ve got a roundup of all the major parties’ manifestos and what they would mean for healthcare in the UK. But whatever the differences between them, the fear remains – voiced by no less an authority than health economist John Appleby from the Nuffield Trust – that, without extra funding, they simply won’t match up to what the health service needs.

Elsewhere in this issue we take a special look at the pharmaceutical supply chain, asking whether the industry is up to the challenge of the current, and new, era healthcare, while managing at the same time the stresses of demand variability and lower margins.

Meanwhile, there’s careers and strategic insights from some of this month’s ‘SmartPeople’, with Sanofi’s UK and Ireland’s Hugo Fry telling us about his journey to become the firm’s general manager, and how these are transitional times for the French company’s Surrey-based affiliate.