Med tech Start-Ups: technology-intensive engineering, applied to Healthcare.

Med Tech Start-Ups: technology-intensive engineering applied to healthcare.

Med tech' is an innovation sector in which investors and markets (including those of emerging countries) are particularly active and in which Italy plays a very important role through a heterogeneous industrial fabric, where innovative SMEs and Start-Ups coexist with large groups.

According to the World Health Organisation, 'med tech' refers to the medical and biomedical technology sector. It includes equipment, procedures and instruments used for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease and for rehabilitation.

Alongside med tech, the terms 'healthtech solutions' and 'life science' are also used. The latter primarily refers to innovations in the pharmaceutical sector. 

Driven by an ever-increasing number of researches and a widespread circulation of scientific knowledge and research, the number of Start-Ups and patents in this sector is constantly growing. Italian med tech start-ups are active, for the most part, in the biotechnology and ICT sectors. They are active despite the difficulties they encounter in terms of bureaucratic timelines. To set up a med tech start-up, in fact, and transform one's idea into a product to be launched on the market, the process is long and complex. A promising technology is only the first step: in addition to finding the appropriate funding, the time element must be considered:

1. First, the device must be classified appropriately, following the appropriate guidelines (which change depending on the intended use of the device);

2. With highly innovative medical devices, CE marking must be obtained in order to place them on the market and market them;

3. Furthermore, if the device is also to be released in non-EU markets, the bureaucratic process to obtain the corresponding markings (CFDA, ect...) must be initiated.

Med tech and life science are two areas of innovation that, more than others, are characterised by great ferment and potential, as well as by bureaucratic procedures and intellectual property conflicts that slow down market access for innovations.

Growing trend (however). 

Let us first of all recall that the world market in this sector is divided between:

1) In vitro diagnostics (IVDs), which is worth €97 billion and is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 4.9%;

2) Medical Devices (MDs) with € 439 billion and projected growth of 5.9% on average per year.

The Medtech market in Italy is worth Euro 16.2 billion and has 4,546 companies employing 112,534 people - Source: Confindustria Medical Devices 2022. 

In Europe, Italy is the sixth-largest exporter, 13th in the world in the Medtech sector (source: Mediobanca 2022), and the first country in the European Union for the production of drugs (source: Efpia 2022).

The Mediobanca Research Area has analysed the annual accounts of the 227 largest Italian MedTech companies with an aggregate turnover of 18.6 billion, 40% of which is generated abroad. In 2021, the worldwide turnover of MedTech is estimated at EUR 535.6 billion, with growth forecast at an average annual rate of 5.7% to reach EUR 632.6 billion in 2024. The sector accounts for 5.5% of global healthcare expenditure and develops research investments of EUR 33 billion, more than 6% of turnover.

North America leads the world with sales of EUR 193 billion in 2021 (36% of the total), followed by Europe at EUR 155 billion (28.9%). Asia is advancing rapidly at EUR 136 billion (25.5%).

The specialities with the highest worldwide turnover are cardiology at 57.7 billion (+8% forecast), imaging at 50.1 billion (+3.2%), orthopaedics at 39.4 billion (+3.1%), general and plastic surgery at 33.6 billion (+11%) and ophthalmology at 32.2 billion (+9.2%). Important development prospects await diabetes devices (+15.3%) and nephrology (+10.6%). 

The European landscape is dominated by Germany with 41.7 billion (26.9% of the total), ahead of France at 23.5 billion (15.2%), the United Kingdom with 17.8 billion (11.5%) and Italy with 17.2 billion (11.1%). Italy has a more prominent position in IVDs where it accounts for 12.7% of the European market, for a turnover of 1.9 billion, making it the third largest producer.

According to the document, Italy exports around four billion and imports six billion. Much better than us is Germany with 28 billion in exports and 19 billion in imports, the Netherlands (25 and 17), Ireland (10 and 2), Belgium (10 and 9), Switzerland (9 and 4), France (7 and 10) and the United Kingdom (5 and 8). The main markets for Italian exports are the United States (11.6% of total exports), followed by Germany and France (both at 9.3%).

The result of this process? Medtech.

Medical devices, Telehealth, Mental Health, are just some of the elements that constitute and represent the real revolution in Health and Patient Care. In a healthcare ecosystem that will increasingly place the patient at the centre through biomedical research, digital transformation, telemedicine, territory and new technologies applied to diagnostics and prevention, hospitals and biomedical and pharmaceutical companies are looking to new doctors, figures with knowledge straddling traditional medicine and biomedical engineering to develop new treatments and create devices and machinery.

The doctor of tomorrow must be trained to work with new technologies. The skills that the doctor must have in order to work in hospitals, biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, and research centres, must be

- Hybridization of knowledge, for the health and well-being of the patient; 

- Open-mindedness, to contribute to the technological solutions of tomorrow; 

- Transversality, to overcome traditional professional boundaries; 

- Flexibility, to work in hospitals and medtech companies; 

- Empathy, to follow the patient on a clinical and human level; 

- Engineering training, to better manage diagnosis and treatment with machines; 

- Knowing how to handle patient ethical issues arising from the use of modern technologies.

Physicians can become crucial figures in the growth of the Medtech sector. The physician of the future will be transversal and possess biomedical engineering skills, able to move within the health service ecosystem of tomorrow. He will have to develop new skills, especially in digital. Therapy becomes a process thanks to rapidly innovating technology and a medicine that is increasingly moving towards personalised care, tailored to the patient and on him or her. And drugs are no longer just a product, but part of this process, combined with devices, diagnostics, medtech. 

Life sciences are now the protagonists of the revolution that medicine is undergoing, thanks to the skills of professionals working in technology parks, research centres and companies, but also of doctors who collaborate in the design and evolution of increasingly advanced and patient-friendly products and drugs.