Medical Technology: Opportunities, Drivers and Growth Platforms

The medical technology industry is characterized by its focus on continually finding innovative solutions to meet the demands of clinicians and healthcare systems to more rapidly and effectively solve problems in the management of disease and trauma.

The medical technology industry is characterized by its focus on continually finding innovative solutions to meet the demands of clinicians and healthcare systems to more rapidly and effectively solve problems in the management of disease and trauma.

Given the state of the art in healthcare regarding the performance of current and potential medical technologies, there are a number of key opportunities in medtech that are driven by specific forces and are likely to be solved by one or more high value platform technologies.  These opportunities, drivers and high value platforms are listed below.

The biggest opportunities in medtech:

• Non-toxic, high strength closure and sealing of internal wounds (GI, pulmonary, cardio)
• Closed-loop “artificial pancreas” comprising integrated glucometer and insulin pump
• Versatile chronic wound management
• Non-invasive blood glucose testing (infrared, interstitial fluid or other approach)
• Non-invasive large molecule drug delivery (transdermal, inhaled, encapsulated, etc.)
• Interventional surgery (catheter or natural orifice) instrumentation
• Infection control for nosocomial vectors
• organ replacement and transplant (preservation, bridge-to-transplant, etc.)

Drivers

• Untreated or underserved, growing patient population
• cost containment
• Eliminating lost productivity
• Less invasiveness for lower cost, faster healing
• Point-of-care (home, physician office, bedside) diagnostics for comprehensive screening and detection
• Increasing demands for devices to be specific, be clinically effective and have low long-term footprint

High Value Platform Technologies

• Materials technologies incorporating one or more features of biocompatibility, adaptation, cell migration, drug elution, resorption, excretion or easy removal
• Adult, embryonic and other pluripotent stem cells
• Gene therapy emerging from recent innovations (e.g., type 1 diabetes)
• Interventional surgical technologies
• multi-parameter (MRI, CT, SPECT) intraoperative imaging
• Laparoscopic and natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery
• Nanotechnology drug delivery, surface modification

We have identified these opportunities, drivers and platforms from research into a wide range of medtech markets, considering state of the art in clinical practice, products/technologies on or nearing entry to the market, clinician and healthcare system perspectives, and the current/forecast sales data for products in surgery, cardiology, spine/orthopedics, cell/tissue therapy, obesity, wound management, others.

See MedMarket Diligence Reports.

(image: medical technology / shutterstock)