A little more accessible: What's to come in the year ahead

Group Editor Dave Gray shares his predictions for 2019 on how regulation and technology will affect the industry. 

The start of the new year is a time for renewal and fresh thinking, while learning what we can from the previous year. For the medical device sector, there are lots of lessons to be learned from 2018 – with the Implant Files scandal, as well as exposes such as Netflix’s ‘The Bleeding Edge’ putting the sector front and centre for all the worst reasons. While there are still debates about the next steps raging internally across the sector, most stakeholders agree that now is the time for change.

It’s not just the regulatory landscape that might be seeing seismic shifts in 2019, however. I’ve a feeling that the buzzwords – connected health, digital health, disruptive technologies etc. – are all about to fall into a more common parlance. Adoption is happening faster in certain areas than anybody expected. Though digital health will still be big and exciting business, we may soon have to stop using that word ‘disruptive’ when we describe it. The thing that seems to have changed in 2018 is that we’ve gained a greater understanding of the potential of many of the connected technologies on the market. That potential may not be realised yet, but at least we’re putting the framework in place, at the point of care provision.

So, what’s next? I always look to the CES consumer tech show in Vegas for my predictions. Digital health and 3D printing were on the agenda again this year, but for me the really interesting thing was the increasing focus on accessibility tech. I have a colleague who remains sceptical about the potential for VR and AR – maybe he should’ve gone to Vegas, I bet it would’ve changed his mind. With speakers from the likes of Microsoft taking to the stage to herald in a new era in accessibility products, it’s fair to say that we could be a lot closer to a futuristic, sci-fi-style healthcare model than many of us realise. So there’s my big bet for 2019 – we will see a new wave of accessibility products entering the market. Where previously the key targets for connected technologies and so-called ‘disruptors’ have been centred around managing chronic illness for the last five years, those same technologies are now set to be applied in a totally different field.

And, of course, accessibility relies heavily on material choice. Grippability, durability and sterility are all considerations for these applications. Human factors design is central to making accessibility products, too. So, you can be assured that in the coming year the plastics community will have its work cut out as healthcare innovations race onwards.