2023: The Year of Action

Over the past holiday season, I took time to reflect on how we can use the lessons learned from our 2022 initiatives, activities, and collaborations, both at Medtronic and SAMED. In this piece, I want to share my reflections on how we plan to take maximum advantage of those lessons to ensure that 2023 is indeed a year of action.

For the year ahead, I look forward to collaborating more, implementing more, executing more, and taking more action. I am confident about our ability to accomplish our goals because, in 2022, we laid out a solid foundation for our work.?

Our objectives and direction are clear; we will put more boots on the ground this year to ensure our strategy is executed.? There is a clear understanding of what we are all about and where we are going.?

Leveraging Innovation to Transform Delivery of Healthcare???

Last year, we focused a great deal on facilitating innovation at Medtronic. While some of this can be attributed to the fact that we believe ourselves to be an innovative organisation, we also admit that in the last three years, we were pushed by Covid-19 to accelerate our pace of innovation.?

During my participation at the GIBS Business School last year, I anchored a discussion on Tech in Medtech, showcasing how the medical technology industry is leveraging technology to address some of the most challenging medical conditions while increasing access to care via technology.

To this end, I noted that we had established a specific remote sales team at Medtronic. This indicates our quest to move away from legacy systems where salespeople went door-to-door to interact with customers, to a hybrid system where people can have direct or remote interaction with our sales team.?

Innovation has enabled us to connect within the company, leading to more efficient processes and quicker delivery times to our customers.

Real Impact on the Ground?

In 2023, we will continue to strive to be trendsetters in innovation. Innovative solutions are pointing towards life-altering technologies, such as touchless patient monitoring. In the near future, healthcare technologies will enable healthcare teams to collect pertinent information from patients in the comfort of their homes; reducing the number of hospital visits.

Innovation doesn’t only allow us to sell products; it ensures that customers can receive support no matter where they are and at speeds that would have been impossible in the past. It means access to specialised and timely support for patients, especially those in remote areas. One way Medtronic is working to reduce the healthcare provider and patient gap, is through Medtronic LABS. The non-profit organisation is using technology to accelerate healthcare access to marginalised communities.?

Read: Innovation in MedTech: A Vehicle for Enhancing the Patient Experience

These are examples of our commitment as a company to focus on more than just the affluent urban communities that are often located minutes away from healthcare facilities.?

We will achieve this through collaborating with partners – in and outside the industry –? who are dedicated to making universal healthcare affordable and accessible to all by leveraging the strengths of technology. This is only possible if we can innovate and create a smooth exchange of information in real-time.?

As a company, leveraging innovation signifies the ability to launch new products and get them adopted faster. A good example is the TAVI (transcatheter aortic valve implantation procedure), which is less invasive than heart surgery. The procedure can be done in as little as one hour. The execution and implementation of this sophisticated technology can be attributed to the fact that we are deliberate about using innovation to break new ground.???

In the last year, we also spent a lot of time working with funders to find ways to increase access to care for patients with diabetes. Behind this endeavour is our commitment to ensuring that patients get access to devices like insulin pumps.?

These insulin pumps come with continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology. This technology makes it possible to record a patient’s glucose levels every 5 minutes, sending the readings between four or five devices via Bluetooth.?

The other related technology is i-Port Advance, which is a small injection port that makes it possible for diabetic patients to take their injectable medicine without the need to puncture the skin for each injection. Each port can be worn for up to three days and deliver ten injections.????

This year, we will work hard to open up this technology to lower tiers and pay-as-you-go models.?

We are collaborating with the Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology (CDE). This organisation is working with medical schemes to enable more patients to access diabetes care devices like the ones I mention above. We expect to see more impact through more access in the new year.??

Driving Impact Through SAMED

At SAMED, we started the last year with several goals, including:

• Elevating the SAMED brand through thought leadership;??
• Driving partnerships and collaborations, especially with SAHPRA and the Department of Health;
• Ensuring SAMED members are compensated by the government;
• Driving transformation through our partners, including the YES Initiative and others.

Much work has already been done to accomplish these goals through roundtable discussions. We also partnered and collaborated with our stakeholders, such as the Department of Health and the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA).?

Stakeholders have already started working with cybersecurity specialists from Deloitte. Other initiatives, including our work around the captains of industry forum, women in #medtech, and the transformation forum, are all part of our drive to elevate the impact of SAMED.?

The roadshows I attended in Cape Town and Johannesburg last year allowed me to meet face-to-face with members.???

All these efforts will continue this year as we also ensure that our members are compensated for what is owed to them by the Department of Health. The YES and other initiatives will remain the main drivers of transformation and diversity.?

We will work to ensure that the momentum we generated in 2022 will continue in 2023. For example, I am already interacting with the Department of Health so we can collaborate as the #medtech industry with the teaching hospitals to bring the equipment and infrastructure required to reach more communities.?

Now that we have created so much critical mass around the YES initiative, we can get more young graduates into roles in the industry. At Medtronic, we currently have 80 YES graduates; in the previous year, we took 40.

As we take the new graduates, we are phasing the old ones over six months, helping them find placements in the industry while they continue working for us. This initiative is known as the Yes Plus. At SAMED, the YES initiative has seen us spend over R100 million.?????

I am also excited to work with Deloitte on the Women Empowerment Index in MedTech to profile women's participation in our sector this year. This will provide a dipstick for us to assess where we are as an industry in involving women. We are also collaborating with Deloitte to continuously monitor and educate our members on the issue of cybersecurity.?

It’s clear to everyone, whether at Medtronic or SAMED, that 2023 will be the year of action.?