Why Next-Gen Innovators Should Look to the MedTech Industry to Deliver Patient Impact

Like other aspects of our life, the healthcare landscape has been dominated by Covid-19 over the past 20+ months. While Covid has added some significant challenges to an industry facing no shortage of challenges already, Covid has also impacted the healthcare industry in ways that, surprisingly, could very well help usher in a new era of innovation and enable a next-level transformation of health care.

The premium placed on innovation in healthcare since the arrival of Covid has never been higher, particularly in medtech. Companies capable of embracing the “innovation imperative” – from their business and employment models to their patients’ experience and the delivery of care – are the companies that will be best poised to meet existing challenges in healthcare and chart a successful future in this new era.

I recently spoke with Professor Gary Pisano at the 22nd Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Annual Conference and shared two big reasons why I think healthcare is entering an era of next-gen innovation, and why I believe that young people setting out on their career looking for cutting-edge projects in an exciting industry that’s saving lives, driving equity, and changing the world should look to the medtech industry – and to Johnson & Johnson in particular.

1.????The first big positive impact of the Covid pandemic is the way it’s repositioned health in the minds of payers, governments, employers, and consumers to where health is now widely seen as an investment rather than an expense – and one that’s vital to national security. The stakes have always been this high, of course, but it’s taken a pandemic to really clarify this for many. This newfound clarity presents a unique opportunity within our industry to make real progress in ensuring access to high quality health care, positive outcomes, and affordable costs for all – as well as a broad understanding outside our industry of the urgency with which we must pursue these goals to meet the unmet needs of so many around the globe.

2.????Digitization is the second way the Covid pandemic has positively impacted the healthcare industry – and is the key to capitalizing on the opportunity just described. The digitization of healthcare is happening now, and the leveraging of data within the industry has the potential to transform access, outcomes, even the very cost structure of healthcare.

3.????Whether it’s using smart-sensing, machine learning, and live navigation to access difficult-to-reach anatomy in a minimally invasive fashion or providing real-time insights to collapse the learning journey while growing the skills of clinicians and other healthcare professionals in remote locations, the digitalization of healthcare is creating greater access to medical interventions that are becoming smarter, more personalized and less invasive, leading to reduced variability in care treatment, and better and more consistent outcomes that are more affordable.

The healthcare industry is on the verge of making significant progress in addressing the top five causes of mortality such as cancer and eye health because healthcare isn’t just a healthcare matter anymore. It’s a business and supply-chain issue, it’s a technology and software engineering matter – and this convergence of business, medicine, biopharmaceuticals, and technology is Johnson & Johnson’s sweet-spot position.

At Johnson & Johnson, innovation doesn’t just live within R&D. Our culture of innovation spans the enterprise, with a deeply embedded understanding and acceptance that transformational innovation is not linear, that it requires the patience of a pioneer to take five steps forward and one step back and to continue to forge through challenges to seek opportunities. We are a 135-year-old, science-based company with a long list of pioneering accomplishments in healthcare, and, while we are proud of our past accomplishments, it is our pioneering spirit that drives us. We honor our past while building the future – and, as we lean into the new era of innovation, the future is bright.

Next-gen?innovation will be fueled by a new wave of digital natives: natural disrupters who don’t merely?“do”?digital, they?“are”?digital. Can you see yourself as a?next-gen?innovator – ready to disrupt and accelerate the way care is delivered for the future??