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Yesterday, EDMA and Eucomed announced recommendations to respective members on how to improve their Codes of Ethical Business Practice. Chief among their recommendations are a phase out of direct sponsorship and stricter guidelines for indirect sponsorship of healthcare professionals to attend third-party organised conferences. They’ve also committed to working with stakeholders to elaborate new models […]

The practice of medicine is meant to keep people well or help them get well so they can live a full, productive life. Technology provides tools toward that goal. It can help relieve pain and suffering or prevent it. But too often we get so excited about technology we lose sight of what’s really important, helping human beings live better. And when it comes to the millions of people living with chronic conditions, and now “chronic cancers”, we need to really understand their lives with an illness to know how technology can help.

With the summer holidays well and truly behind us, and temperatures outside gradually dropping, I am sure the temperature inside the EU institutions is rising as the EU machine is picking up steam again. Commission portfolios have been handed out, the Commissioners-designate will soon be vetted, and certain competences are being moved from one Directorate-General […]

Editors’ Note: This post is part of a series on Consumerisation of Care. Follow the conversation and learn from industry experts using the Twitter hashtag #mtf2014. Digital technologies are changing how companies innovate, interact and do business. Consumer industries such as retail, electronics, and telecommunications already use digital technologies to more closely connect to customers, better […]

The prevailing thought still today is that medtech is driving rising healthcare expenditure. More and more research and publications are finding this not to be the case. The medtech industry is happy to have a fair and balanced discussion on the value of its products, but to do so, everyone must look beyond tomorrow, beyond […]

Tonight, Brazil and Croatia will kick off what promises to be a great month for football fans the world over. And what will make it extra special for us in the MedTech industry is that the first kick will be given by a paralysed teenager. This remarkable feat is made possible thanks to an exo-skeleton […]

The revision of the IVD and MDD Directives has ensured that the last quarter has been a really colourful, hectic and interesting one. The revision process has now entered a new phase where Council will need to agree on a position, after which it will have to negotiate this position with Parliament. That negotiation should then lead to the final texts for IVDs and devices. In terms of timelines, the Parliament is set on finalising both processes before the European elections of May 2014. Until then, I’m sure the evolutions will provide me with plenty to blog about.

Two years ago in our annual report on the medtech sector, Pulse of the industry, we warned that the sector was facing a perfect storm, caused by a general shift toward value-based care, growing regulatory pressure in the US and limited resources as a result of a global downturn. Those events came to pass, with the added complication of tougher new regulatory issues in Europe. It was time, we felt, in this year’s report to see how the sector is weathering the storm.

It’s increasingly clear that the Medical Technology (MedTech) industry is going through an unprecedented level of change. In Europe, budget pressures are impacting market access and reimbursement. Payers and providers require evidence of value at the clinical and socio-economic level. And buying processes are changing.