The annual report on the IVD* testing market in Europe has been published by Med Tech Europe.
Once again the UK is shown to spend significantly less on IVDs per capita than other developed countries, ranking 23rd out of 32 countries at less than half of the top ten, one-third of the figure for Germany and two thirds of France.
Poorer outcomes for patients for many conditions have been correlated with IVD expenditure in a previous study (1), and in the current desperate searches for ways to lessen the burden on the NHS, the wider use of appropriate testing should be closely considered.
The Covid pandemic resulted in commissioning of a huge volume of PCR tests and lateral flow tests, and the report shows the UK topped the table of European countries for numbers of these tests, recording over 340 million tests in 2021. This was over twice the number recorded for the next highest country, France (2).
The full report is available here: european-ivd-market-report-2022.pdf (medtecheurope.org)
- Total Health Care Expenditure vs IVD vs Avoidable Mortality Indicators across Europe 2016; JAB Associates unpublished data
- ECDC Our World in Data – table reproduced in the European IVD Market Report 2022
* IVD = In Vitro Diagnostics, i.e. laboratory tests and point of care tests (such as Covid lateral flow tests)
