Last Updated on 05/06/2024 by Sarah Sarsby
At the recent British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA) Conference 2024, David Lawson, Director of MedTech for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), presented an engaging presentation on value-based procurement and a MedTech Strategy update.
The BHTA Conference 2024 focused on the UK healthtech landscape over the next five years. It was a chance for BHTA members to hear from senior government and NHS speakers about how the changes made today will impact the future of the health service.
In his presentation, David remarked that it is a very active time in the procurement and medtech sectors, and that there is a genuine desire for DHSC to engage with industry, including BHTA members, to ensure its proposals are grounded and well thought-out.
David reflected on the ‘The medical technology strategy: one year on’ report, which reflects on the MedTech Strategy and provides an update on where the medtech sector is headed. Since the MedTech Strategy was published, there are multiple medtech initiatives in flight, such as the Innovative Devices Access Pathway (IDAP).
One of the central themes in David’s discussion was around value-based procurement. He stressed that the lowest price does not always equal best value.
He also highlighted some of the key problems DHSC is trying to solve in the medtech sector. See the slide below.
One issue David particularly emphasised with evaluating procurement is around validating evidence submitted by suppliers.
He said: “Can we believe the claims from industry? How do we validate that? How do we trust the information? Having good data is part of that validation process.
“At the moment, there’s an absence of clarity in terms of validation. That leads to a lack of consistency. Different trusts across the country apply value-based procurement assessment of medtech in different ways. There isn’t a methodology to set a common way of doing this. That makes it inefficient for everyone.
“It’s quite difficult to do validation on medtech, because medtech doesn’t stand still. A product is developed, it then gets iterated, more data is collected, and more evidence is collected. It’s quite hard to make a validation process that’s dynamic and that reflects the way that medtech operates, alongside the scope and scale of medtech.”
David underlined that it may take a while for DHSC to come up with an appropriate, robust, and sustainable process for validating medtech.
In addition, David outlined potential options to move work forward. See the slide below.
David said: “This question about validation of evidence, our thinking at the moment is that we need a system solution. We need some sort of portal where suppliers can submit their information, there’s a validation process, and it can be updated.”
Moreover, David underlined some of the key issues DHSC is trying to iron out to make the medtech sector work more seamlessly. See the slide below.
“From a UK perspective, the majority of our medtech industry is SME-based, so we need to make sure that at a government level and a system level that we are doing everything we can to support SMEs, not make it harder,” he commented.