Future Value Creation in MedTech

Abstract

Value delivery to customers and patients is dramatically shifting in medical technology (MedTech). This article looks into underlying developments, facts and figures around the primary drivers catalyzing this transformation. Furthermore, it explores strategies needed to navigate this shift while providing actionable advice and best practices around the four key aspects vital to creating future value for MedTech (connectivity, data integration, solution and outcome focus, use, and patient-centric design).

Key Takeaways

Explore E2E solutions for healthcare stakeholders through an integrator-as-a-service approach, improving outcomes and daily work life.
Assess solutions that include holistic, cross-functional strategies encompassing development, and commercial and operational excellence.
Discover key implementations that bring value to customers and patients through connectivity, data integration, insights, solutions, and focused outcomes.

Problem Statement

Hospitals confront challenges that put care at risk

Hospitals and endoscopy departments face multiple challenges that put their ability to provide exceptional patient care at risk. Higher costs and limited funding¹, combined with aging populations, increasing rates of chronic disease, and the growing need for CO2 efficiency² mean endoscopists and managers must do more with less. Consequently, this means that there is less funding for medical equipment available, necessitating the best possible use of equipment and increased digitalization.³

However, digitalization alone can’t solve these challenges. Vital time is often spent connecting data and information from systems that lack proper integration just to provide surface-level details that endoscopy teams need to make complex decisions.

With intensifying scrutiny around funding and spending, it is essential to adopt value-based healthcare with a stronger focus on quality.^4,5 Hospitals require documentation accuracy, and adhering to growing quality standards and controls adds more burden for organizations. In the UK, comprehensive procedure data is collected from nearly all endoscopy units nationwide through the National Endoscopy Database (NEDi2), aiming to support quality assurance, service evaluation, and performance monitoring.⁶ Similarly, endoscopists in the Netherlands are obligated to transparently communicate KPIs to the nationwide quality registry. Since 2016, all endoscopists in the Netherlands must register ERCP procedures.⁷

Achieving comprehensive quality measurements often involves manual data collection or the need to establish connections between multiple data systems that are subject to safety regulation barriers. To realize quality improvement, all interacting databases must maintain high standards.⁸ A study utilizing administrative databases revealed that out of 45 reported interval colon cancers, 21 demonstrated administrative errors after examining patient records.⁹

These trends and challenges impact the well-being of physicians. In 2023, 50% of surveyed U.S.-based gastroenterologists described themselves as being burnt out.¹⁰ Based on a study involving more than 9,100 U.S. physicians, 61% blame bureaucratic tasks as the main cause of burnout.¹¹ Today, excessive time is dedicated to reporting¹², and the data is leveraged in limited ways. With staff shortages, physicians are not capable of meeting growing patient demands.¹³ Due to limited time and resources, a lack of empathy was sometimes observed.¹⁴

Ideal Healthcare Setting and Solutions

In an ideal healthcare setting, connected data unlocks efficiency for enhanced patient care. This can be realized through effective time management with automated administrative tasks. Prof. Dr. Jacques Bergman from the Amsterdam University Medical Centre, Netherlands, emphasizes that automated reporting has the power to decrease administrative burdens faced by endoscopists. “The net endoscopy time for an average endoscopy program on my list is somewhere between 40 to 50 percent. The other 50 to 60 percent is spent on administration and logistics, and I am convinced that real-time reporting will reduce that significantly.” Today, only 18% of physicians use artificial intelligence (AI)¹⁵, while 65% see an advantage in leveraging AI¹⁶ to reduce administrative work¹⁷.

Efficiencies in healthcare are delivered through enhanced patient care through immediate insights and recommendations, continuous learning that includes real-time understandings from past procedures, and best-practice standardization that supports delivering optimal standards of care. This requires a new pace of development: guidelines are adapted to evolve, and new workflows are established (BMJ rapid recommendation process). Ideally, quality is clearly shown while balancing less administrative effort. Due to cost pressures with the rising need for transparent quality reporting, payers will pay for quality if it's well-defined, published, and measurable. The result is better patient care starting with enhanced patient-HCP relationships through digital communications support¹⁸, procedures of higher quality,¹⁹ and an improved long-term outcome for the patient²⁰. Prof. Dr. Michał F. Kamiński from the Maria Skłodowska - Curie Institute Oncology Center in Poland highlights the potency of real-time intra-procedural feedback on the quality of the procedure: “So, the quality metrics of endoscopy currently are unknown to the majority of endoscopists. […] It’s simply a burden for them to measure, so they don’t do it. If they receive immediate feedback on their performance, many of them will improve without any further intervention, so it’s a break-through.”

To meet healthcare challenges and unlock endoscopy efficiency, leading MedTech providers need to think beyond hardware. The endoscopy solution provider Olympus is developing a holistic and intelligent endoscopy ecosystem that can enable more effective diagnosis and treatment.

“We believe that next-generation solutions will improve operational and clinical efficiency before, during, and after procedures. We aim to address the quadruple aim of healthcare²¹ with our holistic and intelligent endoscopy ecosystem”, shares Miquel-Àngel García, Global Head of Endoscopy Solutions Ecosystem, Deputy Division Head of Endoscopic Solutions Division. Olympus is currently designing an intelligent endoscopy ecosystem based on data-driven insights and AI to elevate the standard of care. Innovations include intelligent guided treatment solutions for enhanced precision, advanced visualization through AI-empowered cognitive support, and data-driven insights and solutions.²²

Role of MedTech in Achieving Improvements

According to the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE), modern digital reporting systems must be integrated to ensure quality, improve gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy procedures, and ensure standardized documentation of procedures.²³ With current burn-out rates, physicians need to be supported so they can meet rising needs for clear documentation. MedTech providers with a diverse equipment portfolio and a large footprint in global health systems are in an excellent position to deliver outstanding value by complementing their hardware and turning their offerings into holistic, interoperable systems that provide physicians with the support they need. To take advantage of this superb position, MedTech companies need to focus on four aspects.

Key Aspects Supporting the Future Value of MedTech

1. Connect Diverse Hardware Portfolios

MedTech providers should leverage their large customer base and broadly connect their hardware. According to a study from 2020 on connectivity in German hospitals, a high correlation was found between networking and the number of medical devices. The average number of medical devices accounts for 25,150 with a median of 3,600. In a group of university medical centers, the primary departments using networked medical devices are Radiology, Intensive Care, Radio-Oncology RO, Nuclear Medicine NUC, and Anesthesiology.²⁴ This highlights huge potential and opportunity for MedTech providers. By connecting medical devices and offering supporting services, operational efficiency and device performance can be improved.²⁵ Next to connectivity, intra-procedural applications and tools require ultra-low latency and reliability.²⁶ Karsten Klose, Head of Olympus’ Digital Unit, shared, “We have a dedicated R&D division that prioritizes the task of connecting and integrating digital health solutions and medical equipment with hospital systems by adhering to interoperability standards, developing robust APIs, ensuring data security and compliance, as well as focusing on user experience, scalability, and flexibility.”

2. Integrating Data for Insights and Building Trust

While the power of digital and AI is widely recognized today, integration and use of highly sensitive data still evokes discomfort. 41% of surveyed physicians are equally excited and concerned about AI, while 30% are more concerned than excited. The two main reasons for their concerns are patient privacy and physician-patient relationships.²⁷ This emphasizes that the healthcare sector is hopeful about the potential benefits of AI but remains wary due to safety and security concerns. Validating and testing AI will be a gradual process as the technology evolves to meet stringent security standards. Chief Information Officers of hospitals are responsible for designing robust data privacy and security strategies to protect their organizations.²⁸ Hence, hospital IT stakeholders need to be convinced and assured about available data privacy and the security of those solutions. Researchers suggest considering all three layers of the Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) system model when designing a data security strategy: the sensing layer including medical equipment, the network layer that refers to the transmitted data from medical equipment, and the cloud infrastructure layer involving physical and virtual resources. For each layer, a strong security strategy needs to be in place²⁹, ideally proven by security ISO certifications.³⁰ Moreover, data privacy requirements are complex and diverge from region to region.³¹ Dedicated experts need to ensure that data is always processed and handled under local regulations and laws.

3. Think Holistically and Focus on Outcomes

MedTech providers should consider care pathways and clinical workflows holistically while focusing on the reduction of time-consuming administrative tasks. Simple natural language processing (NLP) algorithms have been shown to reduce the time needed to determine an institution’s overall adenoma detection rate (ADR) through electronic health records (EHR) from 160 man-hours to 30 minutes.³² Self-supervised learning algorithms enable interactive and flexible solutions that have the potential to provide what clinical staff currently need.³³ MedTech providers should offer an ambient clinical intelligence, built on multi-modal, sequential Large Language Models (LLM) that can work with data from multiple sources such as guidelines, endoscopy image data, and HIS data, turning information into actionable recommendations for the clinical staff, or pre-filled forms taking a fraction of time to complete.³⁴

4. Put Users and Patients at the Center

Understanding users and patients is key in helping MedTech companies provide solutions that make a difference including selecting the right solution, designing how it is developed, and driving adoption in the clinical setting. While this remains true for hardware solutions, it is even more important in the digital space.

Engin Demirel, EMEA Head of Endoscopy Solutions Ecosystem at Olympus knows from his co-creation experience that “insights need to be provided in the right format and setting to be helpful for the clinical staff”. Data needs to be processed and presented in direct correlation to what the stakeholder needs to provide better patient care.³⁵ The same stakeholder has different needs with in-procedure settings compared to pre-/post-procedure settings. With in-procedure settings, the information must be clear and absolute to avoid distraction and fatigue.^36,37

Information overload is not the only risk that comes with digital solutions. Next to data privacy concerns, physicians worry about the impact digital solutions will have on their relationship with patients³⁸ and their liability when using AI tools for clinical decision-making³⁹. Understanding how a system works and being involved in its development will greatly improve trust, acceptance, and long-term adoption. MedTech providers need to offer maximum transparency and involve users in the development phase like Olympus does with their co-creation efforts.

Impact on the Customer

While strong customer relationships and trust have always been important in MedTech, there will be a change in roles at MedTech companies. “We are moving away from the traditional customer-vendor-relationship to position ourselves as a partner for the hospital. A partner that understands pain points and supports with solutions holistically, strongly involving the other side in how we collaborate”, says Oliver Burghardt, Head of EMEA Medical Endoscopy Business at Olympus. As the use of data is a vital part of the solutions of tomorrow, it is crucial to be able to collect and process customer data. “Providing a high level of transparency and accountability will help gain the patients’ and customers’ trust and avoid a reflex to opt-out of data sharing”, assumes Nadin Tiepelmann, IT-legal at Olympus.

References

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2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10203579/#:~:text=In%20add…

3 https://gut.bmj.com/content/gutjnl/72/1/12.full.pdf

4 https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/life-sciences-and-healthcare/arti…

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6 https://nedpilot.thejag.org.uk/CMS_Documents/NEDi2%20-%20FAQ%20document…

7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34107538/

8 https://www.esge.com/assets/downloads/pdfs/guidelines/2016_s_0042_10018…

9 Gottfried J, Bernstein M, Ehrlich AC et al. Administrative database research overestimates the rate of interval colon cancer. J Clin Gastroenterol 2015; 49: 483–490

10 https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/…

11 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/medscape-physician-burnout-and…

12 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-3684?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rf…

13 https://www.tebra.com/theintake/staffing-solutions/tips-and-trends/caus…

14 https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(19)41588-6/fulltext

15 https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/physician-survey-results-ai-knowl…

16 https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/physician-ai-sentiment-report.pdf

17 https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/physician-survey-results-ai-knowl…

18 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37115527/

19 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9106428/

20 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8811539/

21 Better Outcomes, Better Patient Experience, Better Care Team Experience, Lower Total Cost of Care