After welcoming the political agreement on the EU pharmaceutical legislation in December 2025, the EMA says it will be devoting 2026 to “intense preparation” for its implementation.

After raising $292 million in its Hong Kong IPO, AI discovery and development biotech, Insilico Medicine, signed an R&D collaboration with French pharma Servier SA valued at $888 million to discover and develop innovative oncology therapies by combining Insilico's AI-driven drug discovery platforms with Servier's global expertise in cancer drug development.

Over the last year, diabetes technology saw significant changes, including the acceleration of patch pumps, ever-smaller continuous glucose monitors (CGM), implanted CGMs and increased interest in devices that measure additional chemicals in blood without needles.

The U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence posted a draft update on its recommendations for ovarian cancer testing, proposing several changes that may lead to earlier intervention in the ovarian cancer disease cycle.

IPOs top the list of the big stories in 2025 in med tech. Thirty med-tech companies went public, raising nearly $12 billion, two orders of magnitude more than in 2023 and almost 20 times more than raised in 2024.

It’s been a year of two halves in Europe, with early optimism that the biotech sector had recovered from the post-pandemic funding drought being crushed by an investment slowdown from June onward.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that several Medicare administrative contractors have formally withdrawn local coverage determinations for skin substitutes. There are questions, however, as to whether this will bring an end to excess spending on these products even though the agency has capped the rate paid for entire classes of products.

The level of investment in Europe’s med-tech sector in 2025 did not materialize as many had hoped at the beginning of the year. Reciprocal tariffs introduced by the U.S. government created an uncertain macroeconomic environment, curtailing dealmaking and slowing financing activity. Nevertheless, amid uncertainty, there were some bright spots as medical devices remain essential, and investors know how to navigate market cycles.

After an all-night negotiating session that concluded after 5 am on Dec. 12, political agreement was finally reached on the long-awaited EU pharmaceutical legislation. The aim of the new rules is to improve patient access and increase the competitiveness of the sector, but for the industry, it was too little too late in terms of the incentives, and potentially damaging in the measures to improve access.