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“The device industry is more flexible than even we sometimes realise,” Guy Lebeau, MD, told more than 300 attendees at the Eucomed MedTech Forum. Lebeau is Chairman of the Eucomed Board of Directors.
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The inevitability of socio-economic and industrial change was a recurring theme at the second annual Eucomed MedTech Forum, which convened in Brussels from 6 to 8 October. It’s not an easy pill to swallow for the medical device industry, which feels more comfortable spearheading technological innovation than tinkering with business models. The combined effect of an aging population and sclerotic healthcare budgets, however, will require a fresh influx of creativity from the med-tech sector.
Several speakers stressed that industry should embrace health technology assessments. “We believe in HTA,” unequivocally stated Guy Lebeau, MD, Chairman of Eucomed’s Board of Directors and the head of Johnson & Johnson’s medical devices and diagnostics business for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But there are some complicating factors. It’s not a simple matter to explain to policy makers the economic benefits of a device, for example.
HTAs have a social, legal and ethical impact in addition to an economic one, noted Mike Drummond, Professor of Health Economics at the University of York in the United Kingdom and a member of the European Health Technology Institute for Socio-Economic Research. Policy makers will point out that a working method for evaluating medicines exists. Why not simply transfer that methodology to devices, they ask, according to Drummond. Industry needs tools and data to show why that is a foolish approach, he added.
One change that will have a dramatic impact on the med-tech business model in the years ahead is the rapid development of home-care products. Industry will need to engage with a set of customers that has entirely different demands from the doctors and hospitals that it traditionally deals with. Winning over these customers will require a new approach to product design that draws from consumer electronics, for example. That has been applied with stunning success already in hearing aids and blood-glucose meters. Expect to see more of that.
An important part of the change process will involve investment in medical technology. Some of the money will come from the state, noted Lebeau. But a second part of the investment will come from industry, while a third stream will come from the consumer and home-care market, he added. “That is a model for development for the next 10 years.”
How will industry adjust to this new paradigm? Better than you might think, according to Lebeau. “The device industry is responsible, it can be smart and it is more flexible than even we sometimes realise.”
Many of these and other issues raised during the forum will live on through the Exploratory Process on the Future of the Medical Device Sector, which was officially launched on 2 October by the European Commission’s Directorate General of Enterprise and Industry. The body has invited representatives of the med-tech industry, patient groups, health professionals, insurers and experts to discuss pressing healthcare and industry challenges. The first discussion is scheduled for 9 and 10 November.
More coverage of the Eucomed MedTech Forum and the EC initiative can be found on www.medtechinsider.com.
