According to the “Pulse of the Industry” report, medtech revenues rose 7 percent year-over-year, to reach a record-high $407.2 billion. Research and development spending also experienced growth, jumping 11 percent in 2018 for a total of $17 billion, but that falls well short of the amount spent on share buybacks and investor dividends, a strategy that “may please shareholders in the short term but has long-term potential downside,” the report notes.
Another obstacle to further medtech innovation is a lack of collaboration between providers, patients, payers, regulators and industry. Two roadblocks stand in the way of forging those crucial connections: a lack of interoperability between data management systems and a lack of incentives for stakeholders to partner with one another.
For innovation to happen in the medtech sector, however, those roadblocks must be overcome — and quickly. “Put simply, if medtech can’t strengthen its connections with the other stakeholders, it can’t extract real value from its connected devices,” according to the report.
View the full report here.
More articles on innovation:
Viewpoint: 3 ways to test whether new healthcare solutions are truly innovative
AMA doles out $400K in grants to 15 medical institutions
NYU Langone Health is replacing the hub-and-spokes model of innovation with a ‘neural network’ of interdepartmental collaboration
