The Department of Health and Social Care is working on a new MedTech Strategy. The Diagnostics Strategy was presented to members at the Annual General Meeting in March, and the Medtech Strategy to the MedTech Trade Association forum in April.
The aim of these strategies is to ensure the healthcare system has access to safe, effective, innovative and ground-breaking medical technologies reliably. This will utilise some of the existing strengths of the Medtech landscape, including the current strength of life science research in innovation, and the general promise of Medtech within the UK as a whole. However, it also aims to correct some of the issues that are present such as the lack of prioritisation across innovation and the multiple duplicative stages in evaluations.
The main priorities focus around continuity of supply, innovation and dynamic markets, enabling infrastructure, and having a sector specific focus.
This will all link into diagnostics generally, and hopefully will improve the IVD landscape going forward. We also hope that this will feed into the new UK Medical Device Regulation to make a more streamlined approach.
