What makes a successful partnership between the tech industry and a public health system ? We speak to MedTech consultants Health Enterprise East to find out .
TECHNOLOGY
PARTNERS FOR GOOD :
HOW TECH AND THE NHS WORK TOGETHER
What makes a successful partnership between the tech industry and a public health system ? We speak to MedTech consultants Health Enterprise East to find out .
WRITTEN BY : LEILA HAWKINS
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how the United Kingdom ’ s National Health Service ( NHS ), one of the largest public health systems globally , could benefit from the influence of an increasingly disruptive tech sector . For many , this has been a long time coming , as projects to bring technology into the NHS have been and gone over the last 20 years .
Joop Tanis is the Director of MedTech Consulting at Health Enterprise East ( HEE ), a company providing a bridge between the NHS and the industry . Tanis suggests the need for the NHS to collaborate with the tech sector has always existed . " A lot of research happens within the NHS , but many technological solutions are developed by industry . Arguably , technology has always played a part in the development of healthcare . But in the past 20 or so years , there has been a greater recognition that this partnership is mutually beneficial ."
Solutions developed during the pandemic made this increasingly apparent . " Some of the testing and vaccination technologies have required industry to step up and really work very fast to develop these new ideas ", Tanis says . " But for me , it ' s almost more interesting how we , as a healthcare delivery system , recognised that you [ could ] actually make quite rapid changes if you need to , that dramatically change the way we deliver care ."
HEE delivers programmes such as the Clinical Innovators Network and the MedTech NAVIGATOR Innovation Grants . These help to identify unmet clinical or organisational needs in healthcare and provide a platform for SMEs to respond to those needs by developing innovative new products and services . The Innovation Grants are designed to help SMEs gain access to medical or other necessary expertise during the product development phase .
" Having access to clinicians , researchers and other key stakeholders in the public sector is an essential part of successfully developing and commercialising new
96 June 2021