Maria Shepherd, President and Founder, Medi-Vantage10.01.21
In medtech, so much is hot, but at the same time, so much is changing. Internet availability, expansion of the middle class outside the U.S., and an increasing global population of the elderly who are going to live much longer than their parents are all changing the medical device industry. Integration in medical devices will drive the use of technology so healthcare providers get a higher level of quality time with patients.
With a massive shove, COVID-19 pushed healthcare into the future, accelerating the use of multiple new medical technologies, some of which were evaluated on a massive scale. In this column, we will examine the first five of 10 of the hottest medical technologies in 2021: telehealth, new drug development processes, data-driven healthcare, nano medicine, and 5G-enabled devices. Part two will explore five more.
Telehealth
Many healthcare providers are slow to adopt, waiting for clinical studies and watching early adopters in their respective fields to examine the clinical use of a medical device. According to a 2018 survey, 27 percent of physicians said they were “very likely” to try telemedicine within the next five years.1 Two years later, COVID changed the landscape of treating patients and telehealth claims grew 78 times higher in April 2020 compared to pre-COVID levels (February 2020).2 Further, age matters. Younger doctors reported using emerging technology at a much higher rate than older physicians (Table 1).
Forrester (a research analytics firm) estimated 24 percent of healthcare facilities had a telehealth program in January of 2020. Now, the U.S. will utilize greater than 1 billion virtual care visits by the end of 2021. Regulatory and reimbursement are still issues in telehealth, but the value, gaps, service and payment parity, and technology are being addressed by Medicare, health systems, and insurance providers. This will increase patient access and provide incentives for clinicians to offer telehealth services. In addition, many regulatory barriers to telehealth have been eliminated since many healthcare organizations have one year or more of data on how to improve telehealth services.3
Now the question is, “How will healthcare providers integrate telehealth with face to face services?” Virtual visits will still increase access to primary care and urgent care, as well as to improve collaboration with urgent care clinics, skilled nursing facilities, dialysis centers, and mental health services (which was of significant importance during the pandemic). The policy and payment environment around telehealth and telemedicine is still complex. The AMA predicts that change is occurring rapidly to expand these services.4
New Drug Development Processes
No summary of what's hot in medical devices could ignore the new methods of drug development that enabled the United States to provide COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year. The achievement was a perfect storm of regulatory fast tracking and innovations in clinical trials. This still remains a controversial subject, or one of the greatest scientific accomplishments ever, depending upon your viewpoint. Either way, the development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in less than 12 months may have a lasting impact on drug development: companies that were formerly competitors are now collaborators.5
Another focus is the objective to make medical device and pharmaceutical supply chains more robust to deal with disruption. And the FDA, usually stodgy and slow, has released guidelines for virtual trials6 and remote interactive evaluations for oversight of drug facilities,7 creating a new frontier for the development and clinical evaluation of new drugs.
Data-Driven Healthcare
According to Bain, health data is the new gold rush. The big data market in healthcare is forecast to reach $70 billion by 2025.8 The collection of health data is accelerating and its applications have become more apparent. Its potential for improving patient care is mind-boggling. For example, the company Ultromics enables physicians around the world to use echocardiography to diagnose heart failure and coronary artery disease earlier and in more patients. Ultromics has developed EchoGo, the world’s first autonomous echocardiography service, which provides cloud-based services to support cardiac imaging diagnosis without variability or need to interact with software. The Ultromics team partnered with the NHS to bring the highest diagnostic quality and cost reductions to hospitals. Cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of mortality globally (Table 2), causing an estimated 17+ million deaths annually.9
Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine operates on the atomic, molecular, or supramolecular scale. While miniscule, its potential is enormous and has applications in diagnostics, imaging, sensing, and delivery through medical devices. One application is in T-cell-based immunotherapies, which are highly promising in the fight against many forms of cancer.11 There are three approved products for B-cell malignancies and a great pipeline of treatments in clinical studies. However, there are multiple obstacles to their broad implementation that restrict the number of therapeutically active T-cells targeting tumors. Nanomaterials are uniquely capable in overcoming these challenges, because they can be designed to augment T-cell expansion, circumnavigate physical barriers, and adapt to tumor microenvironments.
BlueWillow Biologics (a leader in biopharmaceuticals) is developing a new generation of safe and efficacious nasal vaccines to protect patients around the world from respiratory infections, sexually transmitted diseases, and food allergies. They have developed a novel intranasal—NanoVax—an adjuvant platform that activates mucosal immunity, which is the body’s first line of defense, followed by systemic immunity.12
5G
Lightning-fast internet connections enabled by 5G are critical to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, smart homes, and smart cities. In healthcare, 5G will provide reliable real-time connection to further enable telemedicine and access to care for millions around the world. It almost seems too good to be true but 5G's promise is next-to-zero latency, connected sensors, and medical devices that can capture and transmit data in real-time.3 Think of the impact on surgical robotics, as a physician on the other side of the world manipulates a robot for the benefit of a patient in India, Vietnam, or Bangladesh.
The Medi-Vantage Perspective
Healthcare providers won’t have to wait long to see these changes. PWC stated 5G-enabled devices will rapidly bring on a new healthcare standard, nicknamed 4P, which stands for preventive, predictive, personalized, and participatory.3 5G promises to provide the critical levels of connectivity to enable a new health system, meeting patient, provider, and payer needs efficiently, precisely, conveniently, cost-effectively, and at an enormous scale.
References
Maria Shepherd has more than 20 years of leadership experience in medical device/life-science marketing in small startups and top-tier companies. After her industry career, including her role as vice president of marketing for Oridion Medical, director of marketing for Philips Medical, and senior management roles at Boston Scientific Corp., she founded Medi-Vantage. Medi-Vantage provides marketing and business strategy and innovation research for the medical device industry. The firm quantitatively and qualitatively sizes and segments opportunities, evaluates new technologies, provides marketing services, and assesses prospective acquisitions. Shepherd can be reached at mshepherd@medi-vantage.com. Visit her website at www.medi-vantage.com.
With a massive shove, COVID-19 pushed healthcare into the future, accelerating the use of multiple new medical technologies, some of which were evaluated on a massive scale. In this column, we will examine the first five of 10 of the hottest medical technologies in 2021: telehealth, new drug development processes, data-driven healthcare, nano medicine, and 5G-enabled devices. Part two will explore five more.
Telehealth
Many healthcare providers are slow to adopt, waiting for clinical studies and watching early adopters in their respective fields to examine the clinical use of a medical device. According to a 2018 survey, 27 percent of physicians said they were “very likely” to try telemedicine within the next five years.1 Two years later, COVID changed the landscape of treating patients and telehealth claims grew 78 times higher in April 2020 compared to pre-COVID levels (February 2020).2 Further, age matters. Younger doctors reported using emerging technology at a much higher rate than older physicians (Table 1).
Forrester (a research analytics firm) estimated 24 percent of healthcare facilities had a telehealth program in January of 2020. Now, the U.S. will utilize greater than 1 billion virtual care visits by the end of 2021. Regulatory and reimbursement are still issues in telehealth, but the value, gaps, service and payment parity, and technology are being addressed by Medicare, health systems, and insurance providers. This will increase patient access and provide incentives for clinicians to offer telehealth services. In addition, many regulatory barriers to telehealth have been eliminated since many healthcare organizations have one year or more of data on how to improve telehealth services.3
Now the question is, “How will healthcare providers integrate telehealth with face to face services?” Virtual visits will still increase access to primary care and urgent care, as well as to improve collaboration with urgent care clinics, skilled nursing facilities, dialysis centers, and mental health services (which was of significant importance during the pandemic). The policy and payment environment around telehealth and telemedicine is still complex. The AMA predicts that change is occurring rapidly to expand these services.4
New Drug Development Processes
No summary of what's hot in medical devices could ignore the new methods of drug development that enabled the United States to provide COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year. The achievement was a perfect storm of regulatory fast tracking and innovations in clinical trials. This still remains a controversial subject, or one of the greatest scientific accomplishments ever, depending upon your viewpoint. Either way, the development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in less than 12 months may have a lasting impact on drug development: companies that were formerly competitors are now collaborators.5
Another focus is the objective to make medical device and pharmaceutical supply chains more robust to deal with disruption. And the FDA, usually stodgy and slow, has released guidelines for virtual trials6 and remote interactive evaluations for oversight of drug facilities,7 creating a new frontier for the development and clinical evaluation of new drugs.
Data-Driven Healthcare
According to Bain, health data is the new gold rush. The big data market in healthcare is forecast to reach $70 billion by 2025.8 The collection of health data is accelerating and its applications have become more apparent. Its potential for improving patient care is mind-boggling. For example, the company Ultromics enables physicians around the world to use echocardiography to diagnose heart failure and coronary artery disease earlier and in more patients. Ultromics has developed EchoGo, the world’s first autonomous echocardiography service, which provides cloud-based services to support cardiac imaging diagnosis without variability or need to interact with software. The Ultromics team partnered with the NHS to bring the highest diagnostic quality and cost reductions to hospitals. Cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of mortality globally (Table 2), causing an estimated 17+ million deaths annually.9
Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine operates on the atomic, molecular, or supramolecular scale. While miniscule, its potential is enormous and has applications in diagnostics, imaging, sensing, and delivery through medical devices. One application is in T-cell-based immunotherapies, which are highly promising in the fight against many forms of cancer.11 There are three approved products for B-cell malignancies and a great pipeline of treatments in clinical studies. However, there are multiple obstacles to their broad implementation that restrict the number of therapeutically active T-cells targeting tumors. Nanomaterials are uniquely capable in overcoming these challenges, because they can be designed to augment T-cell expansion, circumnavigate physical barriers, and adapt to tumor microenvironments.
BlueWillow Biologics (a leader in biopharmaceuticals) is developing a new generation of safe and efficacious nasal vaccines to protect patients around the world from respiratory infections, sexually transmitted diseases, and food allergies. They have developed a novel intranasal—NanoVax—an adjuvant platform that activates mucosal immunity, which is the body’s first line of defense, followed by systemic immunity.12
5G
Lightning-fast internet connections enabled by 5G are critical to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, smart homes, and smart cities. In healthcare, 5G will provide reliable real-time connection to further enable telemedicine and access to care for millions around the world. It almost seems too good to be true but 5G's promise is next-to-zero latency, connected sensors, and medical devices that can capture and transmit data in real-time.3 Think of the impact on surgical robotics, as a physician on the other side of the world manipulates a robot for the benefit of a patient in India, Vietnam, or Bangladesh.
The Medi-Vantage Perspective
Healthcare providers won’t have to wait long to see these changes. PWC stated 5G-enabled devices will rapidly bring on a new healthcare standard, nicknamed 4P, which stands for preventive, predictive, personalized, and participatory.3 5G promises to provide the critical levels of connectivity to enable a new health system, meeting patient, provider, and payer needs efficiently, precisely, conveniently, cost-effectively, and at an enormous scale.
References
- bit.ly/mpo211001
- bit.ly/mpo211002
- bit.ly/mpo211003
- bit.ly/mpo211004
- bit.ly/mpo211005
- bit.ly/mpo211006
- bit.ly/mpo211007
- bit.ly/mpo211008
- bit.ly/mpo211009
- bit.ly/mpo211010
- bit.ly/mpo211011
- www.bluewillow.com
Maria Shepherd has more than 20 years of leadership experience in medical device/life-science marketing in small startups and top-tier companies. After her industry career, including her role as vice president of marketing for Oridion Medical, director of marketing for Philips Medical, and senior management roles at Boston Scientific Corp., she founded Medi-Vantage. Medi-Vantage provides marketing and business strategy and innovation research for the medical device industry. The firm quantitatively and qualitatively sizes and segments opportunities, evaluates new technologies, provides marketing services, and assesses prospective acquisitions. Shepherd can be reached at mshepherd@medi-vantage.com. Visit her website at www.medi-vantage.com.