Healthy outside the EU: Strategy for a thriving MedTech Industry
ABHI Report
Medical Technology (MedTech) has the potential to transform the delivery of health and care in our country. It can increase the efficiency and productivity of services in traditional settings, as well as allowing care to be offered in alternative, less resource intensive locations.
MedTech is an engineering based industry, characterised by rapid, often iterative product design and development, and a large number of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The industry is, rightly, highly regulated, operating in a European-wide system which has evolved with significant input and
leadership from the UK.
For future growth and success, the MedTech sector must be recognised in its own right, with evidence, regulatory and adoption needs that differ significantly from those of biopharma.
Multinational or small, MedTech companies effectively have only one customer in the UK: the NHS.
The NHS is the biggest single payer health system in the world, and recent developments are precipitating the joining up of all public services which determine health status. This gives the UK the potential to become the best
place in the world to develop, launch and assess the value of innovative medical technology. This, in turn, becomes a significant engine for economic growth.
To realise these opportunities, the MedTech industry needs an integrated domestic and trade policy, offering a degree certainty whilst leveraging the flexibilities that leaving the European Union may bring.
The NHS must also provide a local market that is receptive to, and values, innovation.
The recommendations in this paper aim to provide a platform from which those policies can be developed