The fundraising environment for startups in med tech is expected to continue to be challenging for at least another year as public markets remain closed and private investors favor companies that have already de-risked their products. One of the major issues in the U.K. and Europe is that the IPO markets are “pretty much shut” and “our public markets aren’t working”, therefore companies are having to rely on private funding, with venture capital being one of those sources, said Robert Tansley, partner, at venture capital fund Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC).
As companies increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) in medical devices and applications to help treat and diagnose patients, innovators must be careful of excluding large sections of the population in their algorithms and in their data gathering process, delegates heard at the Medtech Futures conference in Cambridge, U.K.
First the stick and now the carrots. The pharma industry in the U.K. on March 1 published its proposal for a new pricing scheme, under which it is offering to pay a fixed rebate of 6.88% across all eligible drug sales, an offer it said will deliver more than £1 billion (US$1.2 billion) per annum back to the National Health Service.
Medtronic plc recently received the CE mark for its Aurora extravascular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (EV-ICD) strengthening its cardiovascular portfolio which saw a 7% year-on-year growth in the third quarter of its fiscal year 2023.
Plans by the U.K. government to claw back from pharma companies another 3.1% of the proportion of the drugs they sell to the National Health Service have been heavily criticized by the pharmaceutical industry as sending the “worst possible signal” to global investors. The Department of Health and Social Care announced in a consultation in December that it planned to increase the statutory scheme payment percentage from 24.4% to 27.5% starting April 1, 2023.
Creo Medical Group plc is on its way to being cash flow breakeven and profitable following a successful fundraise, which will accelerate the rollout of its suite of electrosurgical products, CEO Craig Gulliford told BioWorld.
Looking to turn around the decline of clinical trials within its borders, the U.K. government appointed James O’Shaughnessy, a former health minister, board member of Health Data Research UK and a senior partner at Newmarket Strategy, to conduct an independent review of the country’s commercial clinical trial landscape.
More than two months after a voluntary recall by Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc. (ZBio), the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Agency (MHRA) issued an alert confirming the U.K. National Joint Registry has identified that there are higher revision rates for certain of the company’s total knee replacement prostheses, as compared to all other knee replacements in the registry.
The U.K. government recently released its first ever medical technology strategy which aims to accelerate access to innovative medical technologies in the NHS. Although it was welcomed by the industry, and questions remain as to whether it goes far enough to address some of the challenges to the adoption of medical devices, eyes are on its implementation and whether it will achieve its aims.
The U.K.’s medicines and vaccines manufacturing environment needs a complete overhaul, with the worrying decline in exports and investment in the country addressed, if the UK is to beat global competition, the Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership believes.