EU funded collaboration hub aims to accelerate smart medtech innovation
Crowdhelix, an open innovation platform designed to foster collaboration among researchers, business leaders and investors has launched its latest Helix, the Smart Medtech Helix.
The Smart Medtech Helix has been specifically designed to accelerate innovation across this burgeoning field’s expanding value chain which includes designers, software developers, data scientists, hardware engineers, device manufacturers, R&D organisations, academic researchers and investors.
The launch of the Smart Medtech Helix comes at a time when the field is advancing at an exceptional pace.
The Smart Medical Devices: Global Market Report 2021-2026 estimated that the smart medical devices market is expected to grow from €51 billion in 2021 to €111 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 16.8% during the forecast period of 2021-2026.
The use of smart medtech as a key driver of innovation in the healthcare sector cannot be overstated. However, the complexity associated with delivering medical devices, particularly in resource-limited or -constrained clinical settings means that progress can often be slow.
For instance, of the 300 million surgical interventions undertaken globally every year only around 6% occur in low-income countries, where a third of the world’s population lives. Therefore a strong need for high-quality, affordable surgical interventions for implanting “smart” active medical devices is crucial.
The Smart Medtech Helix aims to accelerate the pace of innovation by fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing. Members of the Helix will have access to a global network of experts, funding opportunities, and the chance to collaborate on research projects.
Crowdhelix CEO, Michael Browne, believes that the Smart Medtech Helix will help bring innovative medical professionals and business leaders together so that they can collaboratively develop cost-efficient solutions that deliver societal impact: “A huge amount of interdisciplinary collaboration is required to construct cutting-edge smart medtech devices that must adhere to robust regulatory standards.”
“To build these sophisticated lightweight, low-powered devices that can deliver context-sensitive personalised treatments to patients and instantaneous data to highly trained medical professionals innovators need to cast a wide net.
“They need to look beyond the skills and knowledge that have become the bedrock of the medical device industry and seek out expertise in AI, deep tech and advanced analytics if they are to gain a competitive advantage.
“I anticipate that our new Smart Medtech Helix will help ambitious innovators to find like-minded collaborators across multiple disciplines so that they can build cost-efficient smart medical devices that deliver real societal impact.”
The anchor project in the Smart Medtech Helix, TARA, underscores what can be achieved when academic experts and innovative businesses from numerous different disciplines collaborate to build on a medtech project.
Coordinated by University of Pisa, the project brings together partners from seven different European countries. It seeks to create a more effective non-surgical solution to treat chronic migraine that also reduces cost and risk and therefore increases accessibility to more physicians and patients.
Working in close collaboration, the TARA team aims to develop a novel platform for the treatment of chronic migraine that will be particularly applicable to resource-restricted environments.
“With the smart medtech market set to grow at an unprecedented rate, it’s vital that we continue to collaborate and innovate to ensure that patients have access to the most advanced treatments and therapies available”, said Massimo Piotto, professor at University of Pisa and TARA Project Coordinator.
“The Smart Medtech Helix is enabling new ways of working, empowering healthcare providers and medical device developers to explore collaboration opportunities.”
The Smart Medtech Helix is now open for membership. Researchers, academics, industry experts and regulatory professionals working in the cell and gene therapy sector are invited to join and contribute to this exciting new community.