ARTICLE SUMMARY:
New elements to navigate.
This column appeared in the September 2021 print issue of Market Pathways.
The medtech market access landscape is evolving, strewn with new features that everyone needs to traverse—things like real-world evidence, patient preference information, cost-effectiveness data, early payor communication, value-based contracts, and on and on, all wrapped up into the concept of value and the challenge of demonstrating the value of a medtech product to different stakeholders in the healthcare system. At least one or two of these topics come up in many conversations I have with experts contending with today’s market access realities. But when you talk to surgeon Jo Carol Hiatt, they all come up. That’s evident from my colleague Steve Levin’s interview with her in this month’s issue. Hiatt has spent decades ruminating on and applying these concepts in her career at Kaiser Permanente and they are all tied together in her new job description as VP of Health Economics and Patient Value at the Medical Device Innovation Consortium. For this reason, the interview with her reads like a tour of all the hot topics of the modern medtech environment keeping executives up at night, from an expert guide whose been in the trenches.
CMS and other payors obviously factor significantly into the conversation with Hiatt, as they do elsewhere in the issue in articles exploring the conundrums of how innovative technologies like AI and remote monitoring fit into traditional payment systems.
On the regulatory front, meanwhile, we make a stop in Asia to highlight the intense regulatory reform efforts ongoing at many agencies in the region. It should be obvious from recent issues of Market Pathways that there is a lot to watch in China. It’s clear that the significant activity is not limited to that country—India (featured on the cover) and Singapore are among other governments making important shifts.
I hope every reader takes away something tangible from this issue for their day-to-day work. Let us know if we can do more to assist your efforts in the medtech market access arena, and make sure you are reading Market Pathways online, with weekly news roundups, video interviews, and the global Pathways’ Document Depot database.
