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When Philippe Croizon broke his first world record by swimming across all four intercontinental channels in August 2012 he declared “I’ve got no big challenges in the near future but “never say never””. Here we are, only a few months later with yet another great achievement…

And what an achievement! As a big sports fan I have been trying to follow exemplary sportsmen, especially those whose lives have intersected with medical technology.

When we speak about healthcare in Europe, the word ‘sustainability’ is used often. From the outset of the economic crisis in 2008, policymakers, ministries of health, customers and payers all have focused on sustainable financial systems and sustainable healthcare systems – often as separate paths to achieve results. As budgets are shrinking, innovative ways to maintain current social and healthcare systems for the long term must be employed. At CleanMed Europe, a conference that brings environmental and healthcare issues together on the same agenda, I was pleased to see that a broader alternative discussion is emerging—one that marries financial and systemic sustainability in healthcare.

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”.

Two weeks ago I attended the eHealth 2012 conference in Copenhagen, along with 2 500 other delegates, policy makers, providers, industry and many others. Coming out of there, my strongest take-away is the amazing opportunities innovation in technology can bring -for patient empowerment, improved health and more efficient provision of care – and the frustratingly slow pace at which it is being adopted in the health care system.

January 2012 was a fruitful month for EU guidance on medical devices and produced among other MEDDEVs the MEDDEV 2.1/6 Qualification and Classification of stand alone software. This MEDDEV contains the latest thinking on how stand alone software, i.e. software that does not necessarily run on a medical device (but may have medical device functionality), qualifies as medical device under the three medical devices directives. If you are interested in a lot more background about the MEDDEV than I can provide in this blogpost (and especially nice flowcharts, which make life more simple for everyone), you can find it here.

When UBM Canon decided to launch the MEDTEC EMDT Innovation Awards, the PIP implant affair was not front-page news. The organisers merely thought that the contributions made by Europe’s medical technology industry in ameliorating the human condition deserved recognition. But in the aftermath of the wall-to-wall coverage of the French breast implant scandal, it’s more important than ever to celebrate and trumpet the achievements of this remarkable industry.

Medical device manufacturers routinely design products that, even a few short years ago, were the stuff of science fiction. And let’s not even mention the amazing research underway today that will animate tomorrow’s medical products, from Tricorder-like devices performing on-the-spot diagnostics to 3-D printers producing replacement body parts. But there’s a problem: money. To succeed in today’s marketplace, medical device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) must take into account funding and reimbursement pathways, the critical role that health technology assessment (HTA) can play, and other factors that may have little to nothing to do with how well or how safely a device performs its intended task.

Innovation delivers better quality at lower total cost in all walks of life. Many of the things that are freely available today and widely used were considered unaffordable luxuries for most in my youth. All this has happened because entrepreneurs and industrialists have constantly sought better ways of doing things and have changed the value equation.

My pulse is already racing at the prospect of this year’s MedTech Forum. The sequence of events following the 2008-2009 banking crisis has played out rather predictably with a broader economic crisis emerging in 2010 and only this year has the full force of public sector impacts been seen as the spending or money printing spree used to avoid deep recession has shifted to efforts to rebalance economies and pay back the debts that were created by ten years of fiscal laxity.