Value

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.

Incontinence is a condition that often gets associated with age. When we think about incontinence we tend to think first about elderly people and that’s normal because over 60% of nursing home residents are affected with some kind of incontinence (from mild to severe). However, European studies estimate that between 4% and 8% of the total population are affected, regardless of age. As our populations grow older, it is fair to say that more and more people will suffer from it. This could be your neighbour’s condition and you wouldn’t even know about it!

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.

Next week, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies will change the way they interact with consumers on Facebook. These changes are occurring, not based on new communications strategies or industry regulations, but because Facebook itself is changing its policies.

Medicine became evidence-based a long time ago and rightfully so. So why is it that policy decisions are, still today, far from evidence-based in Europe? Why are healthcare managers and decision makers still relying upon short-term cost containment objectives when it comes to access, regulation and evaluation of new technologies?

Chairing a two day conference on e-health and presenting at a groundbreaking Innovation in Healthcare conference put on by DG Research has further fuelled my enthusiasm for telling the story about the power of technology to enable massive changes to the way that populations are cared for, whilst simultaneously improving outcomes, the patient experience and cost. If all this seems too good to be true just look at what the alternatives might be.

Everybody who has anything to do with electrical medical devices has been watching with interest the progress of the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) Directives through the European political process. RoHS, which should soon be published in the Official Journal of the European Union, has been especially important as the latest iteration of the Directive will see medical devices falling within its scope from about April/May 2014.

There are some who are claiming that the EU Commission’s formal objection to eleven standards raised at the end of last year shows that the ‘New Approach’ has shortcomings and that the whole system is ripe for overhaul. I would argue far from it. The New Approach is a very clever system of product regulation, […]

When one of the defining minds of business education in recent years turns his attention to healthcare then people would be wise to sit up and listen. Harvard Business School guru Michael Porter first entered the impenetrable world of health policy in 2006 in a book with colleague Elizabeth Teisberg entitled ‘Redefining health care: creating […]