During my tenure in the medical technology industry, including in my role as Chair of the Board of MedTech Europe, I have been honored and humbled on countless occasions to see the results of our industry’s contribution to healthcare delivery. This week marks another of these occasions.
Each year in June, MedTech Week offers a collective opportunity to take a step back as an industry to observe, celebrate but also anticipate the impact that medical technology can have on patient lives and health outcomes in Europe. Currently, we are riding perhaps the steepest evolutionary curve in our history. We are thinking smarter and working harder to bring the best possible solutions to health systems, care providers and patients. Our longstanding mission to deliver value at every stage of the care pathway means undergoing a medical procedure today has never been safer, and predictive patient outcomes continue to improve.
To maintain care standards, it is our responsibility to never settle for existing best practices, and to always strive to improve the physical and figurative tools in the hands of our care providers. Our commitment is unwavering in the support of patient-centered, evidence-based healthcare, and the role medtech plays in improving people’s health and wellbeing across Europe is more important today than ever before. But what about tomorrow?
It is universally agreed that our ageing population and the increasing prevalence of chronic disease will be one of the greatest barriers to high quality and sustainable healthcare in Europe’s future. Despite the strain this is already placing on resources, health systems must expand access to medical technologies while also improving efficiencies that will put value at the forefront of care: enhancing patient experience and improving outcomes while reducing costs.
The medtech industry is uniquely positioned to work collaboratively with decision makers to help set the governing standards of value-based healthcare, and I believe we have a critical role to support health systems to look beyond budgets to holistic healthcare. This is where innovation is born and how sustainable healthcare will flourish. We must remain accountable to ensure quality care reaches patients and innovations reach health providers in the years and decades to come. There is nothing more important than the health of our population and, quite rightly, people and populations will always ensure we evaluate our worth through the value we deliver.
So, during MedTech Week 2018, I ask you to join me in taking the time to consider, celebrate and evaluate our industry’s contribution to healthcare quality today and, in doing so, define the value-driven insights that will equip us to deliver the best possible future of healthcare to those we serve.
