3 min reading time

In this value-based healthcare world, providers put you in a bucket. Is yours:
• An innovation delivering high-value outcomes sufficient to justify a higher price and margin
• A commodity product cutting cost without reducing performance?

I hadn’t thought of it as binary until I read https://medgroup.biz/VBHC from ICON plc.

Interestingly, whether you make an innovation or a commodity, it’s gonna be expensive.

Innovations require premarket approvals and comprehensive clinical and economic evidence packages.

Commodities require design, production, and distribution efficiencies to beat low-cost competitors.

Complicating matters, national health systems tend to favor long-term population outcomes, while private insurers often focus more on short-term costs related to specific acute care episodes. So how does that figure into your strategy?

Other takeaways:
• The 2018 CMS voluntary bundled payment model affects device and diagnostics markets differently, making value evidence predictions more complex.

• For EU markets, health technology assessment (HTA) organizations now require providers to report patient outcomes and broadened HTA criteria to include impact on total treatment costs. And you probably know about increased requirements for all the acronyms: MDRs, IVDRs, and EUDAMED.

And perhaps most valuable, a framework for assessing stakeholder value that considers what value would look like for each constituency.

That ICON plc resource at https://medgroup.biz/VBHC and check out the related webinar at https://medgroup.biz/VBHC-replay.

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𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚
I registered for this free June 21 webinar, “How to make digital work in Medtech,” to see how different it is for the EU versus the US.

Join me at https://medgroup.biz/digital to join the live event or request the replay.

Speakers from Syncera, Agnitio, Ascensia DiabetesCare, and Edwards Lifesciences.

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

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Peg Graham
Improving the Caregiving Experience, Chair of the YANA Health Forum
A challenge for the DME/HME sector? Lack of an outcomes research infrastructure. Only with value-based care have payers expressed an interest in improvements in #FUNCTIONALINDEPENDENCE. The post-acute care sector is now required to the ability of people to perform self-care activities (formerly known as Activities of Daily Living) across post-acute care settings. This has MAJOR implications for #family caregiving since the more people (especially older adults aging with mobility-related disabilities) can do for themselves, the easier it is on the families that care for them.

As Medicare Advantage expands benefit design to include non-medical interventions such as “right equipment, right time” to support aging at home, will they look for outperforming products? Will DME/HME manufacturers invest in innovative products? Will payers/providers engage in rapid cycle testing to understand if a particular innovative product performs better than the commoditized products they currently cover?

Dymphy van der Wilk
PhD 웃
At some point, product evolution is no longer profitable and innovation is needed (see picture: Triz Model). The interesting question is: When is the correct time to start an innovation? When the EU MDR changes are fully implemented, which will be within 2 years-time, this will open a large opportunity for companies that are correctly prepared to start their next innovation and they are the ones that can conquer the world! We can help companies to prepare themselves for these EU MDR changes and we are committed to building your business.

Don Smith
Inventor and Founder at Inhaler
I often say I’m an inventor not an entrepreneur. And the difference is simple.
An inventor is about ‘better way’ and an entrepreneur is about ‘better off’.
Good post Joe.

Christine Zomorodian
Principal Consultant at Gish Consulting
Definitely an innovator.

Matthieu Leclerc-Chalvet
Managing Director – Bringing innovative medical technologies to global markets
Here is another binary buckets set for you: healthcare professionals either must have a product like yours to deliver care/intervention or they can do without. Pretty limiting for innovation, but I heard this a few times over the last months.

Laurie Shollenberger Hurt
Senior Director, Patient Experience at DaVita Medical Group
Thank you Joe. Thought provoking article.

Partho Banerjee
Associate Director of International Business & Advisor Capital Equipments at Boston Scientific
You need to innovate and value add–creating your own identity to stay ahead as a leader and for long time sustenance. Me to provides a space to be a FOLLOWER.