With technology becoming more integral to patient care in recent years, innovation in the medtech space is progressing at an unprecedented level.
From streamlining long-held manual processes to creating entirely new diagnostic devices, new tech is cropping up all over the industry—resulting in a real-world impact on patients' quality of life.
These technologies are helping companies to enable faster and more efficient engagement with patients, improve traditional devices, incorporate more software solutions into patient care, and even launch wholly new products
Plus, these modern tools help medtech companies keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, by launching new products faster and quickly extending to new markets.
Let’s take a look at how a few best-in-class medtech companies are contributing to the pace of innovation.
1. Streamlining quality processes for the better
In medtech especially, quality is the name of the game. The speed at which companies can address post-market or field issues is vital to success. After all, if a product meant to improve patient care isn’t performing the way it’s intended to, there could be tangible life-saving implications.
Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) is an example of a company who has thoroughly streamlined many of these processes and integrated them seamlessly onto one platform.
The secret to ASP’s speedy post-market action is automating and integrating what was once a manual case-to-complaint and reportability process, by using a single enterprise platform.
For instance, one of ASP’s focuses was to decrease their issue-to-resolution times. Now cases are automatically tied to complaints and propagate common data, enabling faster investigations, reportability determination and submissions.
Plus, their enterprise technology enables them to capture nonconformances with batch details which can quickly trigger ship holds, dispositions, and field actions.
And many of these major innovations trickle downstream to CAPA actions, Engineering Change Orders (ECOs), and business processes.
Having the ability to close the quality loop throughout the entire enterprise value chain can not only revolutionize a necessary process, it can deliver better patient experiences and outcomes.
2. Improving traditional therapies
While headlines about Covid-19 and the emerging Monkeypox continue to circulate, in the meantime the most common diseases continue to grow at alarming rates.
Technology is helping to both manage difficult symptoms of these diseases, but also to find proactive ways to prevent them before the onset. Two great examples of companies making improvements over traditional therapies are Diality and Fractyl.
Advances in technology are giving people their independence back. Diality is developing a portable hemodialysis device which eliminates the traditional need for pre-mixed dialysate bags or external waste treatment.
Think of how much easier a diabetes patient’s day-to-day life would be by conducting therapies in their own home instead of adjusting their scheduling around trips to the hospital for recurring appointments. Not to mention the lowered cost.
Imagine a world where therapies for Type 2 diabetes (T2D) have the potential to prevent or even reverse its course. In the US alone approximately 30 million people are diagnosed with T2D and half of them have difficulty controlling it.
Given that the longstanding traditional methods tended to focus on reacting and dealing with Type 2 diabetes (T2D), Fractyl’s Revita therapy is that much more revolutionary as it also centers on prevention. The therapy and corresponding device remodels the lining of the duodenum to address believed root causes of T2D, which could help prevent its symptoms rather than simply treating them.
3. Leveraging Software as a Medical Device (SaMD)
Smart technology is virtually inescapable today. We use software devices in many aspects of our lives—in our homes, in our cars, in our pockets. And our medical needs are no exception.
Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) is one of the fastest growing areas of medtech innovation, enabling tangible life-saving results from:
- Remote patient monitoring
- Faster more accurate disease diagnosis and treatment decisions such as stroke and pulmonary issues
- Streamlined workflows & coordination for care teams
…and the list is increasing exponentially. SaMD has changed how patients manage their health and interact with healthcare professionals.
Case in point, companies such as RapidAI, who leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to vastly speed up and improve care and treatment of stroke, aneurysm, and pulmonary embolism.
Or, Livongo by Teledoc Health with their advancements in remote patient monitoring using intuitive telehealth devices that help patients manage diabetes and high blood pressure from home.
4. Ushering in the future of care
The pace of medtech innovation is accelerating so much it almost feels as if we’ve stepped into the future. Such is the case with Guardant Health’s new Guardant CDx comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) providing results from a simple blood draw in days.
Using this radically simpler liquid biopsy, oncologists are able to obtain information quicker and advise the right treatment to each of their cancer patients.
Hear how Guardant Health has been making huge waves in the field of liquid biopsy in an interview with co-founder and CEO Helmy Eltoukhy.
How does modern single-platform solution help?
Just as ASP was able to deliver speedier resolutions of post-market issues and better patient experiences, the secret weapon underlying all of these innovations is the ability to connect all of their business processes on a single platform solution.
Keeping pace with these innovations requires a modern system to manage integrated change processes and cross-functional collaboration across the entire product and software lifecycle.
The critical and complex products patients rely on demand the responsibility to ensure the best availability, quality, and uptime. And each of these companies relies on the Propel platform to enable them to do so.
Learn more about innovations in medtech by listening to the Product Success Podcast: Quality and Medical Devices.
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