Medical Design Briefs - February 2021 - 12

Technology Trends
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trials would still be at a standstill, " says
Johannesson.

In 2021, OEMs will focus on making devices that perform with simplicity and that are both highly
accessible and available to the consumer. (Credit: Web Industries)

care visits in 2018-2019 to more than 35
percent of visits in Q2 of 2020.1 With
reimbursement now available for telehealth, this shift is possible because,
especially with chronic conditions like
diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a
large portion of medical visits are consultative and only need a telehealth session - the provider can review data
from a patient's connected devices and
then confirm or adjust their therapeutic
regime. In our own work at Glooko this
year, we've seen a 50 percent increase in
the use of our remote patient monitoring platform, which provides the diabetes data used in telehealth visits. "

Similarly, telehealth shifted many
clinical trials to a virtual setting. " Many
trials - as many as 80 percent - came
to a sudden halt with the arrival of the
virus. That's because - out of the
same safety concerns that curtailed
medical office visits - clinical trial
centers had to cease hosting participants on-site for data collection.2 In
response, a vast number of trials were
revived by the use of connected digital
products for remote data collection,
the use of real-world data and realworld evidence, and the capabilities of
modern clinical research platforms,
without which most of the impacted

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Cov

ToC

Diagnostics and Point-of-Care
Platforms
" COVID has accelerated efforts to
bring diagnostic testing closer to the inhome user. There will continue to be a
focus on making devices that perform
with simplicity and that are both highly
accessible and available to the consumer, " says Claudio Hanna, business
development director, medical, for Web
Industries, a contract manufacturing
organization (CMO) that provides medical device and PPE manufacturers with
precision converting and outsource
manufacturing services. " These factors
already are playing a role in COVID testing, and they will be critical in fighting
future pandemics. "
Digital point-of-care testing platforms
will play a significant role in the future.
These platforms will benefit from leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning to drive the next
phase of infectious disease point-of-care
(POC) testing. " AI transforms the way
that results are gathered and analyzed
and ultimately delivered in terms of the
speed and efficacy to the provider and
the patient, " notes Denysenko. " It's all
about the ability to scale quickly, and
platforms like this allow us to do that. "
Todd Martensen, vice president, medical technologies sector, at Benchmark,
adds that POC testing is one of two
major shifts he has already seen in the
types of medical devices being developed over the past few years, and says
that this trend will certainly continue
through the next year.
" The demand for POC is driven by the
desire to move more aspects of healthcare out of the clinical setting and closer
to patients in their everyday lives. Innovative manufacturing techniques, including microelectronics and automation, are making these devices possible
and competitive. The types of devices
we're seeing include in-vitro diagnostics,
especially those involving microfluidics,
as well as mobile imaging and therapeutic devices. "
Connected Devices and IoT
Smart, connected devices are on the
rise, and the role of these connected
devices in the healthcare industry has
grown tremendously. " There is greater
interest in collecting and providing realtime data from patients to care proMedical Design Briefs, February 2021
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Medical Design Briefs - February 2021

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