You are looking for

The rapid ageing of the European population has urged the need for prevention and proper treatment of age-related diseases. Amongst these priorities and priority diseases, Cataract is today the major cause of vision impairment of senior citizens worldwide, responsible of 48 % of blindness around the globe.

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.

Hockey, sailing, golf, football … As an avid sports fan, I used to enjoy all those kinds of activities with great enthusiasm – until the day I became paralysed. Some of you may remember me from the European MedTech Forum in 2011 or from this video on which I told my story after I made my comeback. For those who don’t: my name is Hylke Sieders, I am 37 and suffered from a sudden spinal cord bleeding between the C2 and C3 vertebrae (in the neck) in 2009 which left me almost entirely paralysed.  Almost, since I am able to stretch my arms and use 3 ½ fingers from my left hand. But I don’t have movement in the rest of my body although my legs are not completely devoid of sensation (current status C5-C6).

With its Contract for a Healthy Future,  the medical technology industry acknowledges its role and responsibility in maintaining high-quality, affordable healthcare in Europe despite an ageing population and constrained budgets. This industry commitment offers the much needed solutions to prove that innovation is not a cost driver but a facilitator for driving healthcare quality and efficiency in the future.  From personalized medicine to disease monitoring, the role of the diagnostics industry will be crucial in managing healthcare spending.

The tool most commonly used to demonstrate the value of a new medical technology is the business case. Typical business cases can be thought of as falling into one of four categories. Compared with current care, the technology:

– costs less in the current year and you get what you get from current care (‘save money now’).
– costs the same and you get more than you get from current care (‘more value for current spend’).
– costs more in the current year but cost less when future savings are taken into account and you get what you get from current care (‘spend now to save later’).
– costs more but you get more (‘spend more for better quality’).

World Health Day approaching us on April 7^th is meant to raise awareness on the endless host of hurdles that undermines our health and therefore, our quality of life. Public health is about making sure that the external factors that determine our health are governed by policies that have people’s well-being at the very heart of their mandate. EPHA, Europe’s leading NGO advocating for better health, is committed to that very principle.

This year marks EPHA’s 20^th anniversary in advocating EU and European policy-makers on public health. Bringing today’s leaders to focus on people’s health is not an easy task. The medical devices and in vitro diagnostics files appropriately represent the juggling effort that advocating for public health usually turns out to be.

By now most of you will have noticed that we have launched our “Don’t Lose the 3”-campaign. (If you haven’t, watch the 1-minute video and patient stories here. The basic message of the campaign is that, thanks to our decentralised approval system for medical devices in Europe, Europeans have access to life-saving and life-enhancing technologies three to five years before US patients without compromising safety. This is also the message I brought forward during the 26 February hearing of the ENVI committee at the European Parliament.

First off, let’s start with some background. The first question that comes to mind would be: “What is the EUnetHTA Joint Action 2?” Briefly put, EUnetHTA, the European Network of Health Technology Assessment, is a joint initiative of the European Commission and the relevant agencies in the Member States, aiming to strengthen cross-border HTA collaboration.

This week a very interesting group of people met on the last day of the ESC Congress (European Society of Cardiology) in Munich. Representatives of the Eucomed CRM Telemonitoring Working Group, individual member companies and leading representatives of the ESC came together under the chairmanship of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) to officially launch the White Paper “Moving towards good practice in reimbursement of CIED Telemonitoring”.