The medical industry is rapidly evolving in multiple markets, shaped by techno logical innovation, regulatory changes, and shifts in demand. Businesses can address the resulting opportunities by developing highly competitive new products and position themselves as market leaders.
The Need for Innovation in the Medical Sector
The global healthcare industry is under pressure to improve patient outcomes while delivering economic and environmental sustainability. Medical and healthcare products have to meet stringent performance requirements, as well as appropriate price points, providing value to healthcare providers, whether patient care is delivered in hospital or community settings.
Additionally, sections of the industry are not immune to the pressures of environmental regulation, meaning that the polymer and fibre composition of products, fabric structure, modes of use, and full life cycle impacts of finished products are being more carefully considered. Concerns about waste, and also the lack of circularity, are now influencing healthcare innovation, particularly where waste accruals associated with single use products and device components are known to be significant burdens. Manufacturers also face increasing pressure in some parts of the industry to reduce reliance on single-use plastics and adopt alternative materials, creating functional, but also reusable or recyclable products, with circular economy principles in mind. Meanwhile, evolving chemical, product and environmental regulations – including the ban on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – challenge manufacturers to find alternatives to traditionally used materials.
Compounding these challenges is the saturated nature of some markets. Businesses must differentiate their products by innovating to address clearly defined unmet needs while delivering benefits to patients and healthcare provides such reduced morbidity, nursing time and risks of infection. Failure to innovate risks stagnation in a field where product performance requirements and regulatory landscapes are continually evolving.
Challenges in Developing Next-Generation Products
While the importance of innovation is clear, several hurdles stand in the way of next-generation product development for medical devices and healthcare products:
- Performance Criteria: Increasingly challenging performance criteria need to be addressed without compromising compatibility with installed manufacturing infrastructure. The practical integration of new materials science as well as digital and diagnostic components are just a few examples.
- Sustainability Goals: Balancing performance, cost and evidence-based environmental benefits, particularly from a full life cycle perspective, remains a major challenge.
- Legislative Pressures: Evolving regulations, including bans on harmful substances like PFAS are presenting major challenges as simple material-switching is often insufficient to address the resulting performance gap.
- Patient-Centred Design: The ageing population and the issue of long-term care of chronic conditions presents opportunities to improve product design, reduce patient morbidity and reduce overall healthcare delivery costs.
- Market Saturation: Differentiating products in a crowded field requires new approaches to problem-solving, as well as awareness of developments in adjacent fields of product development outside the medical sector.
Addressing these challenges requires detailed market awareness, technical expertise, market insights and access to diverse manufacturing supply chains.
Emphasising Human-Centred Design
The importance of human-centred design in the medical sector cannot be overstated. Technical performance is of course critical to the utility of the product, but ease of use and compliance with the requirements and experiences of healthcare providers and patients also influence outcomes.
For instance, new products with integrated diagnostic devices may provide inconsistent results leading to inaccurate interpretation by users, PPE may have excellent barrier performance in use, but be a source of infection during removal, and advanced wound dressings that accelerate healing, may still require multiple dressing changes with significant nursing time and costs per week.
Medical products should therefore perform effectively but also with users in mind. Coupled with this are the effects on cost in use, overall healthcare outcomes and waste.
Why NIRI is Uniquely Positioned to Lead Innovation
NIRI’s expertise in ideation and product development offers medical companies a distinct advantage. With a unique approach to problem-solving and detailed overview of both current and emerging trends, NIRI draws insights from cross-sector experiences to develop innovative product improvements tailored to the medical sector.
Key areas where NIRI has supported ideation and product development include:
- Infection Control: Developing new approaches to breaking the chain of infection, for example by integrating antimicrobial chemistry within fibrous devices and developing new approaches to combatting neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as malaria.
- Advanced Woundcare: Designing and manufacturing fibrous woundcare and surgical components to improve fluid management and enhance tissue repair and regeneration.
- Patient Dignity & Wellbeing: Creating products to reduce patient morbidity through improved performance, including odour control for ostomy and continence management.
- Filtration and Separation: Developing new approaches for removing unwanted components in biological liquids such as antibodies, e.g. in donated blood, to provide universal plasma.
- Diagnostics: Integrating physical and electronic functions within industrially scalable medical and healthcare devices to enable early, or remote detection of a change in state.
- Advancing Circularity: Modifying and revising product architectures to improve their design and compliance with circular economy principles, extending their time in use, opportunities for reuse or recycling, and improving their compatibility with end-of-life waste management options beyond incineration.
- Developing PFAS-Free Solutions: Ensuring compliance with emerging regulations while maintaining high performance.
By leveraging our comprehensive knowledge of materials and nonwoven science, pilot manufacturing facilities and industry knowledge, NIRI provides a confidential service to help companies innovate and position their products for success.
NIRI’s Approach to Ideation and Product Development
NIRI ensures that every stage of product development is optimised to deliver the highest value.
We facilitate ideation workshops with individual companies internationally on a confidential basis, to identify unmet needs and generate creative options for new product development. Supported by a comprehensive pilot manufacturing facility, we have experience of processing natural, regenerated and synthetic fibres into finished fabrics and prototype products, enabling subsequent scale-up via larger manufacturing supply chains. NIRI will identify the best materials to balance functionality, cost, and sustainability as well as test and validate prototype products to ensure they meet required standards and benchmark performance against existing market leading products. Consideration of the existing competitive landscape, impending legislative developments and other intellectual property is an integral part of our approach, to ensure products remain relevant, competitive and compliant with future market demands.
Driving the Future of Medical Innovation
Ideation and next-generation product development are essential for businesses aiming to lead in the medical sector. By fostering innovation, addressing emerging challenges, and incorporating sustainable practices, companies can position themselves to stay ahead of the market.
Contact NIRI today to explore how we can help you innovate in the medical sector.
Article by:
Jack Eaton, Chief Commercial Officer