EssentialTech at the WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices

Bertrand Klaiber, Matthieu Gani and Vanessa Laversenne presented three of EssentialTech’s main projects related to health to the numerous visitors passing by the EPFL’s booth (GlobalDiagnostiX, GlobalNeoNat, and H2Ospital¹). Enthusiastic reactions were triggered with the attendees.

The GlobalDiagnostiX project was presented in a lecture and was perceived as ground-breaking and innovative. Indeed it is the only project worldwide which addresses the pressing need of 2/3 of humanity who still lack access to radiology, with radical redevelopment of technology.

Dr Klaus Schönenberger chaired a session on Innovation in Medical Devices and it appeared, that there still is a tendency to equate innovation with technology. Although technology is an crucial component, it is obviously not the only one, and often not even the hardest part in the problem of access to essential medical devices in resource poor-contexts. The proposition that the EssentialTech team offered to the participants of the forum is that of an alternative way to think about innovation in medical devices. One should rather think about innovative ways to create a sustainable health impact with medical devices and for this purpose, it is crucial to consider the problem in the perspective of creating value-chains. A value chain is a the chain of stakeholders who directly or indirectly provide value to the patient: actors who provide for example the engineering or the manufacturing of the medical device, the commissioning, the training of the users, the maintenance, repair etc. All those are essential segments in the value chain and all are contributing to the final health benefit provided by the medical device. On the reverse, it is equally important that all these actors extract value for themselves out of the value chain. Otherwise they will stop providing their contribution and the initiative ends there. Innovation is required in any or all of the component of the chain if one wants to improve access to essential medical technology worldwide. Having to consider all the actors involved in the chain makes it a highly complex and multi-dimensional problem, but also provides many opportunities to innovate.

This proposition of a methodological canvas (the value-chain design canvas) proposed by the EssentialTech team - which is clearly shown on the GlobalNeonat website² - was met with a lot of interest by all participants.

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¹EssentialTechprojects page: essentialtech.epfl.ch
²GlobalNeonat website: www.globalneonat.org