MedTech Bites September 2018 – edited by Jeanette Donnelly
Healthcare is a conventional and often conservative business in many ways due to the gravity of dealing with the lives of patients. Medical technologies that are too novel and disruptive can take years to be accepted into the system, if at all.
However, with the reality of increasing global health care spend projected to reach $8.7 trillion by 2020 spurred on by an ageing and rapidly increasing population, therapeutic advances, and infrastructure needs, we have to think differently.
In Deloitte’s 2018 Global Health Care Outlook, one part of the solution to tackle the healthcare challenge ahead is investment in exponential technologies that can disrupt the current processes and deliver care that is meaningful and of value to patients.
Technologies that have been identified include robotics, Artificial intelligence, data and analytics, synthetic biology, 3D printing and nanotechnology, companion diagnostics and biosensors and trackers. These are areas of opportunity for NZ medtech and we need to be able to support our developments into the market at a much faster rate – anecdotally, it takes about 10 years to introduce a new technology into the market.
New Zealand is unique in that we are are small enough to have a working connected ecosystem supporting medtech developments. What we now need to do is strengthen this environment further to support technology translation and commercialisation. This is one of the areas of focus in the NZ Health Research Strategy.
Another aspect to address is our lack of scale. New Zealand companies and researchers have many connections overseas but we also need some formal country-to-country arrangements with other innovation ecosystems that are visible and accessible to all of NZ medtech.
The CMDT is starting some initiatives on these matters with other stakeholders and welcome your input to finding solutions, so please contact us if you have any ideas and links you want to share.
Dr Diana Siew
CMDT Co-Chair &
Associate Director MedTech CoRE
IN THE NZ MEDTECH WORLD…
Volpara, a health technology company has developed a software to improve the quality of mammographic screening for the early detection of breast cancer.
Read more here
Nine companies and four research groups hit Wellington full force with another amazing TIKI Tour at the Ministry of Health. The tour initiated conversations about innovation and healthcare.
Read more here
Startups need a good intellectual property (IP) strategy in order to commercialize properly. Patent attorney, Jonathan Lucas shares some tips, tricks and and how to get started.
Read more here
Jill Cornish, a University of Auckland Professor, was recognized for her outstanding research on Lactoferrin and receives the Nancy Sirett Memorial Award. See what Jill and her group will be working on next!
Read more here