MedTech is the future of healthcare - so Europe must stay competitive

As the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have shown, innovation is absolutely critical to the healthcare industry. It’s the key to our ability to respond to ever changing patient needs.

With more than 500,000 products and services on the market, MedTech companies are improving patient outcomes and helping to make health systems more sustainable.

Across Europe, these businesses are delivering major advances in areas including cardiac pacemakers, deep brain stimulation, intravascular ultrasound, next generation sequencing, point of care diagnostic testing, and home dialysis care.

MedTech in action

I’m proud that Johnson & Johnson MedTech is one of the key players in Europe’s MedTech industry - a dynamic and innovative sector working to save and improve lives. Not only that, this sector is also a major contributor to the EU economy, responsible for 730,000 direct jobs (figure according to MedTech Europe.)

It’s incredible to see the progress we’re making at the Johnson & Johnson MedTech DePuy Synthes site in Cork, Ireland, which is at the forefront of 3D printing joint care. The site manufactures more than three million implants per year across knee, hip, and shoulder joints. 3D printing allows us to make fully customisable joints, and surgeons work with us to make new jaw bones, personal to the patient.

I’m also blown away by developments in VR training for surgery. This is such a powerful new way for surgeons to learn. It makes you feel like you’re in an operating room, and helps healthcare professionals learn by doing – even building muscle memory – and that’s a powerful thing. We’re committed to bringing the power of VR to surgeons everywhere.

Why the MDR matters

The MedTech sector makes a huge contribution across Europe to healthcare, the economy and society. However, recent policy developments pose challenges to Europe’s future competitiveness in the sector.

The way in which the European Medical Device Regulation (MDR) is implemented is critical. We welcome the recent MDR Amendment which we hope will offer a significant relief to the strained system. We also applaud the European Commission clearly stating that this legislative fix is only one of the measures addressing the current issues with the implementation of MDR and more work is needed.

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We must ensure that the discussion on well-functioning MDR puts patients’ needs at its centre. It’s also vital that we emphasise the importance of access to innovation, and the EU’s attractiveness for investment in this field. And lastly, we need to ensure that our sectoral legislation embraces digitalization (including e-labelling and e-IFUs) which offers a big opportunity to make healthcare systems more sustainable and value-based.

Again, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’ve seen a growing trends towards digitalisation, with many more healthcare solutions in the market, and many startups entering healthcare with low-cost, agile solutions. This digitalisation helps service-oriented models and decentralised healthcare to cut healthcare costs.

MedTech also supports the trend for taking a more value-based approach in healthcare, which aims to improve outcomes while optimising the cost of care, helping the efficiency of healthcare systems, and supporting the sustainability of companies’ innovation capacity.

Let’s prioritise innovation

The constant evolution of the MedTech sector is inevitably impacted by external trends, such as regulation, healthcare systems sustainability and fragmentation of health policies in the EU. When each are imposed, they have huge potential to slow down research and innovation, which we must work hard to avoid.

There is so much potential within the European medical technology landscape to further drive innovation. It’s vital that we make the most of the EU’s long tradition of collaborative R&I in healthcare, as well as the wide diversity of organisations, disciplines, and cultures across the continent. Both have a key role to play in helping the MedTech sector continue to transform healthcare and, most importantly, patient outcomes.