OPINION:
America’s chronic disease epidemic is rightly getting attention at the highest levels of our government. The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative is multi-faceted and spans the full spectrum of healthy living, and we commend this critical effort. From almost every angle, medical technology is the foundation of making and keeping Americans healthy and it always has been.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently illustrated this point with his vision that all Americans will have a health-and-fitness indicator a “wearable” within the next four years. It is a bold vision, and medical technology, or medtech, is already leading to achieve it.
Putting patients in the driver’s seat with clear, instant, actionable information on their own vital signs? That’s game-changing and lifesaving. I’ve seen this firsthand with our daughter who has Type 1 diabetes and has gone from requiring multiple painful finger sticks and insulin injections every day to wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) with integrated insulin dispensing and alerts on her and her parents’ phones of anything amiss.
From firsthand experience, the health benefits, convenience, cost-effectiveness and incalculable peace of mind of wearable medtech are remarkable.
Americans can now buy FDA-cleared CGMs over the counter to track their blood glucose levels and help them make necessary lifestyle changes to improve their metabolic health, all without the need for a prescription medication.
Wearables are proliferating across the range medical needs: A T-shirt with sensors that provide heart rate, breathing rate, and other data, with real-time AI analytics sent to a patient’s doctor; a patch to monitor breathing in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma patients, alerting their care teams in real time of any concerns; and lightweight wearables, to treat chronic vertigo, warn of epileptic seizures, diagnose postpartum hemorrhaging, control essential tremors, and much more.
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As impressive as that is, wearables are only a sliver of the medtech that serves as the backbone of patient care in America.
Consider these real-life examples: A heart transplant performed via surgical robot with minimal incisions, no chest opening or breastbone breaking necessary; a prostate cancer surgery performed robotically, with the patient and doctor 7,000 miles apart; catheters to correct an irregular heartbeat in a minimally invasive procedure that only recently would have required open-heart surgery; a blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease; a smart mat used at home for 20 seconds daily to help diabetic veterans avoid leg amputations; a focused ultrasound to destroy cancer cells without chemotherapy; sound waves to liquefy liver cancer tumors; bone regeneration; a pacemaker smaller than a grain of rice; diagnostic imaging powered by AI, producing accurate results in minutes rather than days or weeks; technologies that deliver accurate, detailed mammogram results in under an hour. And so much more.
Speaking of AI, its impact on patients today, with the promise of much more to come, is already tremendous: A recent study showed a 29% increase in breast cancer detection when AI is incorporated into screening. These AI-supported screenings clearly detected more invasive cancers at an earlier stage all without increasing false positives.
The list goes on. The point is: Medtech innovations enable longer, healthier lives, providing patients with better health and mobility to work, exercise, play sports, and live their lives to the fullest, at a much lower cost than other types of medical interventions.
A few key facts:
Medical advancements, including medtech-enabled diagnoses and treatments, have increased life expectancy by more than five years from 1980 to 2019.
Medtech has helped reduce the duration of hospital stays by 38% since 1980.
Medtech has helped reduce fatalities from heart disease and stroke by 49% since 1990.
Screenings due to improved medtech, including advanced imaging, have helped reduce deaths from breast cancer by 43% since their peak in 1989; prostate cancer deaths by 53% since their peak in 1993; and cancer deaths overall by 32% since 1990.
Name any condition, and you will find medtech scientists and engineers developing a solution for it all over the U.S. to save and improve lives.
These are all compelling reasons to support this industry. But there are even more.
The vast majority of medtech companies are small businesses, often started by a doctor or nurse with a new idea to serve patients.
Medtech supports 3 million jobs in all 50 states, with 95% of medtech R&D occurring right here at home. America leads the world in medtech manufacturing and innovation, and our technologies are in demand globally because of FDA’s reputation worldwide as the global gold standard for safety and efficacy.
That medtech is getting faster and more efficient and less expensive all the time is vastly improving patient access. Policies that would improve Medicare coverage and reimbursement decisions would help. Flexibility with tariffs would recognize the essential humanitarian purpose of medtech and the complex supply chains necessary to stock all health care settings with everything needed to care for patients around the clock.
As the Trump administration works to “Make America Healthy Again,” medtech has been and continues to be a proven part of the solution. Our industry looks forward to working with the administration to achieve our shared goal of making sure America is as healthy as it can possibly be.
• Scott Whitaker is President and CEO of AdvaMed, the Medtech Association, the world’s largest trade organization for medical technology companies.
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