MedTech Week Magazine 2018 At a glance
Highlights from the 3rd Edition of the Award-Winning MedTech Week Magazine
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I take this opportunity to sincerely thank all our members for their enormous efforts in making the role of medical technologies more widely known during MedTech Week 2018 last June.
Now in it's fourth year, MedTech Week brings out the best in the companies and national associations that represent our industry. Together, they have served up dozens of examples in unwavering ingenuity to illustrate the value of medtech.
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Bringing Sound & Vision to the message
Articles
Keeping you running
MedTech Europe go the extra mile in Brussels
Hidden heroes
MedTech is all around us but often goes unseen – and undervalued
Virus or bacterium?
Knowing the cause of an illness helps accelerate recovery, avoids waste of resources and reduces antimicrobial resistance
Sports therapy
Exploring the connection between sport, health and medtech
Race against time
The next French medtech Unicorns
Young companies rewarded for innovative new creations
Boot Camp
Start-ups find inspiration in six-month accelerator program
Food for thought
Access to innovation was on the menu at ‘parliamentary breakfast’
Extraordinary stories, ordinary lives
Meet the patients for whom medtech is a way of life
Tomorrow’s world
Digital health will boost patient safety and tackle infection control
Perspectives
‘Dialysis at home: savings lives, preserving autonomy’
Dialysis can be essential to the wellbeing of people living with kidney failure.
‘Committed to protect our health from Roberto Bertollini, HFE honorary president’
‘Thinking smarter & working harder to deliver Value-Based Healthcare – Together’
Michelle Brennan, Chair of the Board of MedTech Europe and Company Group Chair, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies, Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)
‘Artificial intelligence: The next revolution in healthcare?’
At the turn of the century, healthcare companies were at the zenith of an ‘innovate-manufacture-sell’ business model.
‘How digital technologies will reshape musculoskeletal healthcare’
Digital technologies provide an opportunity to move musculoskeletal care to the heart of value-based healthcare. MedTech Views spoke to Satschin Bansal of Zimmer Biomet about some of the innovations that will change the field.
‘Colorectal cancer: don’t delay diagnosis’
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the world and the second most common in Europe. The disease can be fatal but early diagnosis and intervention are improving outcomes for patients.
‘Diagnosing STIs: faster tests for chlamydia and gonorrhoea can help reduce the spread of disease’
Advances in diagnostic technologies give patients same-day test results for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea.
‘Asthma is a struggle – imagine carrying a 50kg stone around all day’
For people living with severe asthma, daily tasks can be a real challenge.
‘Digital health is here – time to take the lead’
How do we prepare Europe for future technologies?
‘Diagnosing Deafness’
Timely cochlear implant surgery can significantly help deaf children’s speech, language, cognitive and socio-emotional behaviour.
Virus or bacterium?
Knowing the cause of an illness helps accelerate recovery, avoids waste of resources and reduces antimicrobial resistance
Most infections are caused by viruses or bacteria. Flu, for example, is caused by a flu virus; tuberculosis, on the other hand, is caused by a bacterium. Knowing the true cause of an infection matters. For a start, it allows doctors to initiate the right treatment promptly. This usually improves outcomes for patients significantly.
A bacterial illness can be treated with antibiotics, but these medicines are ineffective against viruses. However, because the clinical symptoms of some illnesses may be similar (such as fever, pain and fatigue), it is not always easy for doctors to identify the source of infection. In some cases, antibiotics are prescribed for viral illnesses such as the flu.
This is a problem. Not only will the treatment not work, and is therefore wasteful, it also contributes to antimicrobial resistance. Inappropriate use of antibiotics is among the causes of antimicrobial resistance which threaten to reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics. Without antibiotics, even routine surgery would become high-risk.
Raising awareness of this among the public and medical professionals was the goal of a conference on antibiotic resistance hosted by French daily newspaper, Le Progrès, on 7-9 June. The event attracted speakers from industry, academia and senior health sector leaders. It attracted 2,500 people and generated media coverage that put the issue in the spotlight.
‘Antibiotic resistance is considered the greatest threat to our health and our children's health,’ said Dr Marie-Francoise Gros, Medical Affairs Director, bioMérieux. ‘The role of diagnostics is very important because it enables the cause of an infection – viral or bacterial – to be determined. Only a bacterial infection justifies a prescription for antibiotics.’
Around 25,000 deaths in Europe are associated with resistant bacteriae and this will increase if common antibiotics become useless. Better use of diagnostic tools will help to ensure smarter use of antibiotics in the years ahead.
To further public awareness on this topic, bioMérieux has created a website explaining the threat and how to combat it.
France
