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Innovation is synonymous with progress. Embracing innovation means embracing the need to improve the sustainability and efficiency of healthcare systems by encouraging new business models, unlocking new market opportunities and improving health outcomes. Uptake of innovation in technology and services, however, could be quicker on the European healthcare scene, with myriad barriers currently standing in the way.

Ever since the end of WWII, the reigning clinical philosophy was one whereby there was no limit on medical treatment. From the 80s onwards, this philosophy shifted towards a more balanced approach whereby the benefit of the treatment had to outweigh the potential risks associated with it, with evidence-based medicine being the concept used to assess a new treatment.

Many Germans suffer from chronic wounds (mainly leg, pressure or diabetic foot ulcers) and their numbers grow by 650,000 annually. Wounds of all sorts have a major impact on patient function and quality of life, and may be life-threatening. In addition, providing wound care is a significant cost to the healthcare system. These types of wounds alone are an estimated annual financial burden for healthcare payers of €5 billion.

Too often we, as stakeholders in health, forget about whom we are talking when we say “patients.” We talk as if the patient is somewhere far away from our discussions rather than the person with whom, about whom and for whom we are having those discussions. In reality, we are all patients – for some it’s just once a year and for others it’s every day of the year. But it’s important to remember that health policy should, theoretically, benefit all of us when it is our turn to receive healthcare – no matter what that care is.

Most of you know that John Wilkinson has left the position of Eucomed Chief Executive at the end of last year. And even though John’s decision was announced already in June of 2011, as I write this now, more than six months later, it still feels as if he informed me of his intentions only yesterday. Fond of the Brussels bubble while at the same time being excited about the European and global perspective of the job, I am sure it was by no means an easy decision.

Since the French authorities made their announcement just prior to Christmas, the PIP case has generated a large amount of press and political attention. Quite rightly, the main focus is on the women affected and on governments providing the right health advice and appropriate follow-up. As I am writing this posting a couple of days after we released our first statement, I understand that the European Commission is to seek an independent scientific opinion on the human health risks of silicone breast implants.

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has become a hot topic among the international health community. I am sure that for all healthcare stakeholders achieving UHC would be like a dream come true.

My wife and I are part of the problem. Last weekend we ran respectable 10 kilometre times although we are both in the latter half of our fifties and we will play energetic tennis twice in the week ahead. Both had life expectancies in the early seventies at birth and now our risk adjusted life expectancies are straddle ninety years. We are a triumph for modern lifestyles and medicine (both having had interventions for conditions which may well have been fatal one hundred years ago) yet healthcare is the political scourge of our times. The success of society in increasing healthy productive years is matched by the failure of that same society to plan for such success in the provision of pension, health and social care. Yes, we have a financial crisis which has followed the profligacy of a generation but this is a minor issue compared to the need to rebuild our economic models to accommodate the demographic changes which us ‘baby boomers’ are so central to.

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.