Connecting links in the medical device development chain

Earlier this year, Veeva MedTech hosted its sixth in-person MedTech Summit, bringing together representatives from 108 companies across the industry. Veeva’s goal is to simplify and accelerate the process of bringing medical devices and diagnostics to market, offering cloud-based software focused on clinical, regulatory, quality, medical, and commercial operations. Through the platform, medtech companies can enable their teams to more easily collaborate, and the Summit brings that collaboration to an in-person level twice a year.

“We’re all working together to do this,” says Seth Goldenberg, president of Veeva MedTech. “Everyone’s competing out there, but at the same time, they’re also trying to address the same challenges. So how do we share those best practices?”

The answer involves putting aside the notion of competitors for a moment and innovating together to find common solutions. One way is through events such as Summit, where Veeva’s customers exchange knowledge and experience through sessions and networking opportunities. These sessions can look significantly different from year to year, as so much changes so quickly in the medtech industry.

Veeva MedTech is dedicated to staying on top of these changes and constantly updates its software, embedding best practices as industry requirements shift. Therefore, Veeva’s unified platform is optimal for managing the scores of operations and data involved in clinical research, regulatory compliance, quality management, promotional and scientific content, and the other aspects involved in bringing new medical devices and diagnostics to patients. In such a fast-changing industry, that’s critical.

Veeva has the numbers to back up the efficiency of its systems, including 50% faster clinical study build time for companies using Veeva EDC and 80% of regulatory submission tasks eliminated or simplified when using Veeva RIM. As challenges and demands continue to build, speed is key – but, as anyone in the long medtech development chain from design to market knows, speed can be hard to maintain when precision and safety are also vital.

Balancing these factors is challenging in every stage of medical device and diagnostic development, from design to manufacturing to final regulatory approval, and it can’t be done successfully without collaboration throughout each step. Machinists on the shop floor may not physically meet with regulatory intelligence professionals, but they’re connected through the vital threads of documentation and information running through the entire process. A medical device can’t be approved for the market without knowledge of its entire history – what materials were used, how it was manufactured, etc.

Veeva MedTech offers a way to contain all relevant knowledge in a single location and easily share it. However, while automation and software can streamline and connect, the value of in-person connection shouldn’t be overlooked, as events such as the MedTech Summit remind us. Sessions throughout the two-day event offered participants new ways of approaching challenges, while networking opportunities allowed representatives of the clinical, commercial, medical, quality, and regulatory sides of medtech to build cross-functional relationships.

A word frequently heard in medtech and manufacturing is “silo,” – as in, how do we eliminate them? The answer is multifaceted; however, through a combination of cloud software solutions and face-to-face knowledge sharing, it can be distilled down to two words – connection and collaboration.

Veeva MedTech
https://www.veeva.com/medtech