There’s something new coming to annual TCT (Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics) symposium next month. Fogarty Innovation is partnering with the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), the nonprofit organization behind TCT, to launch the TCT MedTech Innovation Forum, a full-day focused specifically on innovation on September 16, the first day of TCT in Boston, Massachusetts.
One of the most important educational conferences in cardiovascular medicine, TCT attracts thousands of clinicians and researchers from around the world. The TCT MedTech Innovation Forum will expand that audience by drawing stakeholders from across the medtech industry, especially the investors making bets on new technologies and the medtech companies and strategics developing and acquiring them.
The goal of the Forum is to expand TCT’s traditional, physician-oriented focus on innovation by addressing some of more entrepreneurial and business aspects of technology development. Presentations will bring together a variety of stakeholders to share their perspectives and explore dynamics shaping future of innovation like enabling new technologies, population health trends, and the financial climate.
“The intent is to bring together people from different disciplines to not only uncover opportunities and drivers of innovation, but to develop preliminary solutions to some off the problems that plague the innovation ecosystem,” says Fogarty CEO, Andrew Cleeland. “Each session will be interactive, with participants encouraged to debate and discuss critical issues affecting health care today.”
The preliminary list of main sessions includes:
- Shaping Innovation Priorities: Global Demographic and Population Health Trends
- Emerging Models of Healthcare Delivery
- Predicting the Future of MedTech: Transformative Concepts and Technological Trends
- Macro and Micro Financing Trends
- How Robotics are Redefining Healthcare
- Pain Points in Healthcare: Challenges and Opportunities
The high-impact list of confirmed speakers to date includes Andrew, Juan F. Granada, Martin B. Leon, Lisa Earnhardt, Marc Galletti, Tracy MacNeal, Mike Mahoney, Michael Mussallem, Robert Califf and Allan Will, among others.
“Each of the session topics was developed with the goal of delivering valuable information and insights,” says Andrew. “For example, the first session is a landscaping – a detailed mapping of what we see changing from a disease state perspective. What are the emerging unmet clinical needs? Innovation can take a decade to reach patient care, making it essential to use an evidence-based approach to target the right opportunities.”
He continues, “At the same time, the way in which care is delivered is also evolving. The pandemic accelerated some of those trends, giving rise to a decentralized care model facilitated by the rapid growth and adoption of digital technologies, as well as important advances like home dialysis. Now that we’re coming out the other side, we need to evaluate lessons learned and outcomes data to decide what approaches are really working and where we should focus our efforts.”
Andrew also highlights the last session, which is designed to elicit the viewpoints of major ecosystem stakeholders. “By hearing from payors about the problems they are most interested in solving, or from clinicians about care delivery or other issues that need to be addressed, entrepreneurs in the audience will gain insights that might lead them to change their thinking or adapt to a new problem set,” Andrew says. “This can help their companies more effectively address market needs.”
“In today’s complex innovation environment, it’s not enough to solve a clinical problem,” he continues. “To get to the bedside, your solution has to work for multiple different groups, including the four P’s – patients, providers, payors, and policymakers. This is why it’s essential for innovators to understand the perspectives of all of these stakeholders and start with the end in mind.”
Networking breaks throughout the day are designed to facilitate new collaborations with the goal of sparking new ideas as well as partnerships that can address bottlenecks and other challenges in the innovation process.
“We’re committed to bringing the latest medical breakthroughs to physicians and their patients as quickly as possible,” says Juan F. Granada, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer of CRF. “We’re thrilled to partner with Fogarty Innovation to create a world-class forum with the goal of inspiring and driving innovation forward to improve the quality, accessibility, and cost of delivering cardiovascular care.”
“Ultimately, this is a chance to be heard – to share your perspectives and priorities, and to connect with other stakeholders shaping the future of medtech innovation,” says Andrew. “We expect that attendees will leave better equipped to identify opportunities for innovation and to act on those opportunities by leveraging a deeper understanding of the innovation process and a broader network of expert resources.”
TCT will be held September 16-19, 2022, in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Register now and we’ll see you there!