Blog: Not innovation, but implementation is the most important development in MedTech

Especially when you're involved in innovation, it's good to regularly look back and reflect. Evaluate, determine which developments went well and which didn't, and, more importantly, why this is the case.

After more than five years, I stepped down as Medical Delta chairman this month and was succeeded by Sanne de Vries; last year I retired as a professor at Leiden University and Delft University of Technology, and as a gynecologist at the Leiden University Medical Center.

A good time for some personal reflection on the field of medical technology.

The impossible became possible

As a surgical specialist, you're highly dependent on the available tools and instruments. I've experienced and helped develop technological developments that I considered impossible at the beginning of my career. They've helped patients and me; healthcare as a whole has improved by leaps and bounds.

However, while there are many successful medical innovations, there are many more ideas that ultimately didn't make it to the finish line. Even more troubling are the examples of innovations that did reach the clinic, but proved to offer no added value in practice while generating additional costs or a significant additional contribution to the healthcare sector's already high carbon footprint.

Technology push is a thing of the past

What ultimately makes a medical innovation successful? The most straightforward answer I've encountered is: proper implementation and integration into the healthcare process.

Reducing the so called ‘technology push’ has been a key aspect of this. Fuelled by the success of medical technology developments in the 1980s and 1990s, we as physicians were often receptive to new gadgets and inventive technologies. Perhaps too receptive, afraid of falling behind or denying our patients a groundbreaking innovation, without truly understanding its usefulness, necessity, or application.

Time and again, the human factor proved to be more decisive.The result: many innovations, no matter how advanced and well-developed, never reached the operating room or were shelved soon after their introduction. Unsuitable for practice, too complicated, or not compatible with existing healthcare processes.

Time and again, the human factor proved to be more decisive than technological possibilities.

Doctor meets engineer

In response, partnerships such as Medical Delta emerged to promote this synergy between doctor and engineer. This quickly proved to be an effective way to incorporate practical needs and practices into development processes, resulting in increasingly better alignment between innovation and implementation.

Over the years, the medical domain expanded from doctor to healthcare professional, patient, health, and prevention, and the technological domain from engineer to developer, innovator, and designer. Collaborative processes also changed. Periodic consultations or encounters by chance, gave way to structured, iterative development processes, in which practical solutions to complex problems are sought from all relevant perspectives and disciplines. Furthermore, the Technical Medicine program has emerged, where the curriculum incorporates both medical and technical knowledge.

The future remains unchanged, despite the changes

The current developments in healthcare, with the rise of robotization and especially AI, are no exception. Because no matter how promising AI possibilities for healthcare are presented, healthcare professionals will ultimately have to learn to work with them.

Here too, ‘technology push’ will prove to be unsuccessful. Scalpel, surgical scissors, robot, or AI: ultimately, they are all tools and instruments in the service of humanity. Not innovation, but its implementation is the determining factor for MedTech developments.

By Prof. Dr. Frank Willem Jansen, outgoing chairman of Medical Delta

This blog was previously published on Zorgvisie.nl