Q&A: The challenges facing UK medtech

After CPI published two reports which highlight why UK medtech companies might be moving abroad to develop their products rather than remaining in the UK, Rahul Kapoor, CPI’s director of healthtech discusses a couple of aspects of the reports with Ian Bolland.

IB: I’m particularly interested to focus on the challenges and possible solutions this report identifies. Let’s start with the challenges, did you identify any that were unique to medtech/healthtech compared to other sectors in the UK economy?

RK: The medtech market is unique. Despite being one of the biggest employers in life sciences industry with more than 4000 companies, mostly SMEs, with a turnover of approx. £30 billion turnover, it uniquely remains fragmented and lacks a robust industrial growth strategy.

The complexity of medtech sector is very diverse and requires complex technical skills and capabilities but investing in medtech can provide significant economic benefits.

IB: Along the theme of sector complexity – you identify a need for a single front door – where does the sector find itself now and how does it go about creating the pathway that you envisage?

RK: In order to create ecosystems that can solve complex challenges, both industrial and government support and engagement is crucial.

At the moment, medtech innovators face a higher risk of failure with limited resources to invest time and money to develop networks or choose to move to the US. Anecdotally this has been increasing.

The sector needs to collaborate better and have a national medtech industrial strategy access investment for R&D and the industry.

The UK has built a unique catapult model to support the industry and organisations including CPI, ABHI and BIVDA can work together with the industry to enable this to happen.

IB: There’s a bit in the report that says Technology Developers don’t necessarily know about the opportunities for support to scale-up, what would you put that down to?

RK: The simple answer to that is the complexity of the landscape, lack of advanced manufacturing capability and challenging adoption in the NHS make it difficult for an SME to completely scale up in the UK.

The UK needs a global centre of excellence, a single front door that allows companies to rapidly access support and feed the challenges to scale up right up the industrial strategy group.

IB: When referring to the complex manufacturing landscape, it strikes me that some manufacturers don’t necessarily realise the help they can provide to medtech. Is that a fair reflection of what you came across?

RK: There is a significant opportunity to longitudinally use their capabilities in medtech, for example from the semiconductor industry, or flexible electronics. However, manufacturers don’t often understand the regulatory requirements for product development and are often locked out of the market.

Specialised manufacturing and scale up capabilities are critical for MedTech. The patient safety impact and regulatory risks are high, and specialised capabilities are required.

IB: Regulatory uncertainty crops up in the report. Despite uncertainty, is there anything that medtech developers can do to make their lives easier?

RK: Yes.

Medtech SMEs often start their regulatory journey and investment late. Companies need to ensure that their go to market approach factors in the regulatory requirements.

CPI recently ran a regulatory voucher funding programme for SMEs to access advice and support to move further in their journey. This was significantly oversubscribed and demonstrated the financial burden.

IB: The challenges of NHS procurement seem familiar. What ideas do you think need to be explored to remove the complexity surrounding this?

RK: While the focus of the reports was limited to industrial challenges, NHS procurement is one of the biggest challenges highlighted. There are programmes ongoing around improving and simplifying NHS procurement, such as the recent refunding of AHSNs who have the mandate to drive adoption.

However, one significant opportunity for the industry and NHS together is driving clinical trial and clinical assessment of technologies. Many digitally enabled medtech companies fail to validate their technologies and suffer from poor evidence, while the UK has been losing its leadership and significant NHS revenue in clinical trials. 

IB: Is there anything else you would like to add?

RK: Medtech is a large employer, sector and the significant research investment represents a significant opportunity.

The UK’s medtech sector needs to come together, build a national industrial strategy and enable an aggressive growth of the sector to drive investment, economic growth and patient benefit.