BIVDA now has over 200 members from the IVD industry and can confidently liaise with stakeholders as the voice of the industry. We are in a unique position in being the representative Association for around 95% of IVD companies operating in the UK.
The structure of our membership spans across spin outs and start-ups, through to multi-nationals across all disciplines, and the depth of experiences and achievements within our member companies is comprehensive.
We had a strong base prior to the pandemic, and through the activities undertaken over the past 2 years, we are continuing to embed our position as the go to Association for expertise in IVD. Our focus on this sector with our investment in specialist expertise and experience is not stretched across other Medtech industries allowing us to deliver strong and consistent messaging to our key stakeholders.
As part of our stakeholder engagement strategy, we hosted UKHSA at the BIVDA offices. Following on from the External Affairs working party meeting and December’s Procurement working party, we welcomed both Sarah Collins, Commercial Director (taken over from Jacqui Rock) and Deputy Director, Moira Ford (newly appointed) to a meeting to better understand their supplier engagement objectives and share some key initiatives from BIVDA that we could work on together.
Four main areas were discussed for potential workstreams, Covid-Test Procurement, Future Pandemic preparedness, UK domicile manufacturing capability and procurement enablement for innovation and domestic industrial strategy.
Much of the conversation was about how to learn from the best and the worst of the pandemic procurement and systems in place and to ensure that they are much more engaged with suppliers collectively in the IVD sector to better understand who to contact, who to engage with and to not fall into the same mistakes made previously. There is a strong will to increase transparency to re-build trust with the sector and there will be some honest and open conversations taking place.
They are keen to access the industry through us at BIVDA to ensure the widest reach for communication and strategy discussions and they will be working with us more closely over the coming months.
Therefore, to start this dialogue as we mean to go on, please can you send me any questions about any of the 4 topics above. They will be anonymised. Our first agreed activity is for me to send our questions and they will send theirs to me.
Email me HERE
Please provide these to me no later than Friday 18 February at 12.00.
