The new European Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) introduced by the European Commission (EC) has led to a lot of discussion around the implications for getting products on to the European market. But what about products that are already on the market? What does the new regulation mean for these so-called…
The consumer health sector is expanding fast. From its traditional base, the category has exploded to deliver a myriad of products for consumers to manage everything from personal health and hygiene to fitness and pampering treatments. This explosion has several directions. Established healthcare companies which have an appetite to build…
It’s not every job that gives you the chance to experience life on the other side of the world. When the latest phase of growth at our US office gave me the chance to relocate from the UK to California, it was a great opportunity to immerse myself in a…
The words ‘post-market surveillance’ (PMS) appear 129 times in the new European Medical Devices Regulation (MDR). This repetition is not accidental. The requirements for manufacturers to ‘actively and systematically’ gather, record and analyse relevant data for the lifetime of each device they market is work most companies had not been…
How we buy goods and services – and manage our money – is undergoing a revolution. Gone are the days when large imposing banks could control access to our cash. The future is banking as an open platform.Consumers want easy access to their money – and they want spending it…
As wearable technology in all its (as yet unknown) forms becomes ubiquitous, it is interesting to reflect on practical changes this might bring to our lives – and whether it will represent a significant departure from the now decade-old smartphone generation. Having never used any wearable technology before, I was…
In the innovation world there is always a lot of interest in breakthrough and disruptive innovation projects. It’s an exciting goal to maximise your profitability by making the competition obsolete when you dominate a product or service category. We all know the ‘poster children’ of this strategy – Apple, Google,…
Diagnostic testing is rapidly moving out of the lab and into the hands of untrained users. But developing the system architecture for a high-performance test that is also easy to use is a complex challenge.A great example of advancements in point-of-care (PoC) testing is the pregnancy test. In the 1970s,…
Regenerative medicine and cell therapies have long been hailed as the holy-grail of medical treatment. Treatments that use the patient’s own cells to fight disease or regenerate damaged tissues sound like science fiction, however in research institutions around the world this is exactly what is happening 1, 2. For now though,…
The world has become information rich and hyper connected, but the promised benefits of integrating our 21st century technology into healthcare have not yet been fully realised. Innovation in some healthcare sectors is rightly perceived from the outside, to reflect a bi-gone era; lacking the pace of change in other…
Cambridge Design Partnership regularly hosts two trainees from the Engineering Development Trust’s ‘Year in Industry’ scheme. This offers students who are between A-levels and university a year of industrial experience. As we come to the end of our year we have written about our experiences.Being two girls, fresh out of…
Recently, a major drug distributor announced that it would offer refunds to any patient that suffered a heart attack whilst being prescribed their latest cholesterol-lowering drug; this is essentially the refund based business model that has previously been conceptualised and debated in the healthcare industry. There are many considerations to…