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The Medical Technology Device Industry Works to Overcome the COVID Crisis

The medical technology industry plays a vital role in ensuring the health of patients worldwide. The COVID-19 virus highlighted the industry’s crucial role when it placed unprecedented strain on health care systems that resulted in increased demand for all types of medical technology, including diagnostic tests, personal protective equipment(PPE) and ventilators. From the outset of COVID, the medical technology industry responded with extraordinary efforts, dramatically increasing manufacturing capacity and capabilities. But more than just increased production, our efforts also focused on partnership arrangements and other creative solutions to address all facets of the pandemic. New ways of operating have become the new normal. These included partnerships with non-med tech companies, and deployment of medically trained employees to support public-health needs.

We will briefly highlight a few of the important activities undertaken by the medical technology manufacturers to combat COVID, while recognizing that the current challenge of the Delta variant may again necessitate another unprecedented commitment of creativity and resources. The discussion elaborates on manufacturing/production developments, and activities in the IVD industry, all of which focused unprecedented attention and resources on alleviating the public health crisis caused by COVID-19.

MedTech Meets the COVIDC challenge

During the early part of COVID, and continuing to this time, the medical technology industry has ramped up its manufacturing capabilities, engaged in 24/7 accelerated manufacturing, cross trained employees, and operated a maximum capacity. New channels and feedback were established for support of health care professionals. Companies channeled every possible resource to fight the pandemic.

The medical technology industry has donated millions of dollars’ worth of medical products and cash to hospitals, foundations and charities around the world. We have seen to date, however, no source that adequately aggregates all of these contributions. The medical technology industry has taken, wherever possible, a partnering approach, coordinating closely with governments to ensure the delivery of supplies where they were most needed. In some cases, industry created new devices and diagnostics to help effectively diagnose and treat sick patients.  In other cases, it expanded existing modalities, such as ventilators and telehealth. Here is a link that illustrates the scope and scale of some of this work : Global Taskforce on Pandemic Response (pandemictaskforce.org). The task force, which includes and is supported by many medical technology companies, will purchase 1,000 ventilators to assist India, and has already provided 25,000 oxygen concentrators and 25,000 additional mobile oxygen concentrators. Task force working groups are addressing the needs of many countries. 

During the early days of COVID, AdvaMed member companies increased production of ventilators at unprecedented rates. On April 1, 2020, it was announced that members producing ventilators had expanded production to between 2 to 3,000 per week, up from 700 per week the previous year. Production continued to increase to between 5,000 and 7,000 per week later in 2020. Companies performed this impressive feat through ingenuity and innovation, adding new shift lines to production, using third parties to explore opportunities to enhance supply chains and forming creative partnerships with other industries.

AdvaMed also launched a platform called the Med Device Network to help device manufacturers locate and partner with thousands of component part manufacturers and sellers from around the world during the COVID pandemic. The move is designed to support efforts to build upon the medtech industry’s mobilization in 2020 to manufacture, deliver, and administer crucial supplies and tests for COVID-19. The Med Device Network supports manufacturing and delivery of 12 critical medical supplies and is also designed to help to close any potential supply gaps as quickly as possible without marketdisrupting actions. The platform will allow medtech innovators to respond to ever-changing needs with lightning speed. The Med Device Network connects manufacturers of medical devices with a wide pool of potential suppliers from both inside and outside industries. Manufacturers on the site post lists of part needs, grant individual suppliers access to those proprietary lists, and work offline directly with suppliers to determine if a partnership can be forged. The site has also evolved to help provide logistics solutions for manufacturers.

Diagnostics Manufacturers Mobilize

COVID required a solution to accurately determine the scope of the problem. COVID tests needed to be more readily available and manufacturing needed to increase dramatically over the short term.  Over the course of the last year, AdvaMedDx members have dramatically mobilized in an unprecedented effort to develop and manufacture hundreds of millions of molecular, antigen and serology/antibody tests for COVID-19. Companies have also increased manufacturing of laboratory and point-of-care instrumentation to support test expansion. Significant supplies of these quality COVID-19 laboratory and point-of-care tests–instrumented and instrument-less, are available and member companies have augmented manufacturing to continue to adeptly support our collective response and recovery. Testing will continue to be a necessary and integral part of our ongoing response to COVID-19, even as many receive vaccinations and the pace of new infections slows.

To expand testing to all, AdvaMedDx and its members have collectively advocated on a wide range of policies, including flexibility in sample collection and where tests can be run; funding to extend testing infrastructure; coverage policies aligned with the intentions of the CARES Act; and ensuring the utility of tests for screening is wellunderstood. AdvaMedDx continues to work with the US government and other partners, including international, to extend the reach of testing by encouraging the use of all types of COVID-19 tests across all modalities.

Early in the pandemic, to support government pandemic response effort AdvaMedDx launched a COVID-19 Testing Supply Registry. The Registry provides real-time, actionable data on COVID-19 testing supplies shipped to laboratories nationwide. The Registry includes participation from fourteen leading diagnostics manufacturers whose tests together comprise ~80% of the COVID-19 molecular tests on the market in the U.S. These companies have shipped ~450 million molecular tests to laboratories across the U.S. since March 2020.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has placed unparalleled demands on modern healthcare systems, the industry’s response has vividly demonstrated its resilience and ability to bring innovations to market quickly. But the crisis is likely far from over and the sector’s innovation capabilities must continue to rise to the challenges presented both by COVID-19 and the economic fallout from its spread. While many industries are facing unprecedented disruption, medicine and healthcare are uniquely affected given the nature of this crisis.

US Government Supporting Ongoing Partnership with Korea

Manufacturing demands in response to respond to COVID have placed severe strains on supply chains, via increased demand for key raw materials and components. These challenges have manifested acutely in the semiconductor industry, a key input for the medical technology industry. In an illustration of continued partnership in allocating important semiconductors, the Biden Administration recently announced more than $17 billion in US semiconductor investment in South Korea, as part of its initiative to strengthen engagement with allies and partners to promote fair semiconductor chip allocations, increase chip production and promote increased investment. 

CONCLUSION

The medical technology industry has demonstrated its ability to work tirelessly and with other industries as partners to do everything possible to combat and alleviate the COVID pandemic.  The industry cannot help but be changed as a result of these challenges and efforts to meet them. A recent McKinsey survey of global business executives noted that more than 90 percent believe COVID-19 will fundamentally change their businesses, and 85 percent predict lasting changes in customers’ preferences. Among healthcare leaders, two-thirds expect this period to be the most challenging in their careers.  The COVID pandemic has caused the medical technology industry, an industry whose lifeblood is innovation, to focus even more in that direction. History suggests that companies that invest in innovation through a crisis outperform their peers during the recovery.  This bodes well for the medical technology industry, which has proven it is essential to the modern economy, and has mobilized in a remarkable manner to continue to address ever changing COVID pressures.