UNLEASHING VALUEFour ways to navigate the changing

medical device landscape

The medical device sector has always been challenging, with increasingly complex technologies, and tough quality and regulatory hurdles. Until recently, device makers overcame these barriers by creating innovative, clinically beneficial products and selling them to physicians and hospitals at prices that made the effort worthwhile.

That’s not the case today.

The value of a device is no longer solely in the product itself. With new government emphasis on accountable care and the market’s growing desire for holistic approaches to health and disease, a medical device’s value is now judged not only at the point of care but also by its efficacy along the entire continuum of care.

At the same time, the market’s appetite for traditional device innovation is waning, FDA approval times have slowed to a crawl, and well-funded, non-healthcare companies such as Samsung and Verizon are using their consumer-savvy, rapid prototyping skills to stake their claim on the $340 billion global medical technology market.

It’s the perfect storm for medical device makers.

So how do they create devices that achieve the same high clinical standards but are faster, better, and cheaper AND deliver the accountable care and better patient outcomes that are now required?

The answer lies in cloud computing.

Open for collaboration

According to a recent survey of medical technology executives by PricewaterhouseCoopers, most of these companies identify “open innovation” — external and internal people generating ideas together — as one of the top two approaches that will generate more growth. Nearly 81% of executives have plans to collaborate with strategic partners during the next three years.*

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Given the rigor and the regulations involved in developing medical devices, it’s not surprising medical device makers have remained steadfast to more traditional mechanical and electrical technologies, and paid less attention to “soft” consumer-centric technologies. At the same time, the nature of device makers’ business-to-business model of selling into hospitals didn’t require them to have insights into patient outcomes or satisfaction.

But now, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, device makers recognize that they must provide the best possible experience for patients and they’re looking to get closer to patients by emulating what leading consumer-based companies do. This means using social and mobile technologies to engage consumers, gather more social intelligence, and facilitate remote monitoring along the care continuum.

Device makers have traditionally collaborated with physicians and surgeons to create and develop innovative products. This collaboration has given the world many lifesaving devices — from pacemakers to imaging devices to implants that make people whole again.

But just as a device’s efficacy needs to extend beyond the hospital, so too must its development cycle. Device makers should look to collaborate with people beyond the hospital and outside their traditional R&D teams to generate insights and widen the funnel of ideas flowing into the company.

Equally important, this collaboration should take place quickly, because it’s simply not enough anymore for a device to be “better.” Now device makers need to be able to react quickly to changing market conditions and accelerate the pace of prototyping and product development.

Cloud computing solutions offer an ideal environment for connected, real-time collaboration. Device makers can set up secure online portals to enable internal departments (R&D, Legal, Marketing, and Sales) as well as external customers and partners to team up and work together across time zones and locations. These same portals also help keep everyone in sync on the status of the research pipeline, research projects, and recruited resources.

Faster, more innovative development

Cloud computing is rapidly emerging as a preferred way for medical device makers to unleash value, and for several reasons.

• It offers a cost-effective way to securely share massive amounts of data — especially medical images — anytime, from anywhere, which is very useful during clinical trials.

• It encourages collaboration in real-time with everyone along the continuum of care — from patient to physician to provider to device maker.

• It is tailor-made for mobile health and remote monitoring since users only need a computer or smart device with internet access.

• It enables ROI-worthy analytics that provide feedback on the “who, what, and when” of app use in the field.

• It provides data interoperability and integration, which are key capabilities to have in place to deal with compliance and provide best-in-class customer service.

• It is flexible — cloud services are highly configurable, adaptable, and scalable, and require less upfront investment and ongoing operating expenditures than traditional IT models and legacy, stand-alone systems.

Here are four ways device makers can use cloud computing technologies and services to compete in today’s new value-oriented, outcome-driven healthcare environment.

2 Get closer to patients

Send in the cloud

Four ways to navigate the changing medical device landscape

For most cloud platforms, support for mobile and social technologies is fully “baked in.” With cloud-enabled medical devices, patients can upload device data and share it with their doctors and families, anytime, anywhere. Likewise they can use social media to provide feedback, ask questions, and find support. At the same time, device makers can collaborate with online communities of patients, track patient interactions for clinical trials, help patients manage their health, and provide enhanced case management capabilities for care teams.

This nimble approach to data sharing couldn’t be coming along at a better time. Industry trends indicate that by 2020, at least 160 million patients in the U.S. will be monitored and treated remotely for at least one chronic condition.**

Healthy appetite for health apps

Mobile device users who downloaded at least one mHealth application (mHealth is the practice of medicine and public health, supported by mobile devices) onto their smartphone doubled between 2011 and 2012.***

Few industries face the compliance burdens that device makers take on daily. Staying compliant is so difficult, in part, because of the frequent changes in control measures, often coming from government regulations. Nowhere is this more evident than when device makers are conducting clinical trials, as images have to be scanned and loaded (usually from multiple sites) and patient identifying information removed before they can be shared and analyzed.

Cloud computing solutions ease this burden considerably by providing a central place for files and images to be uploaded, organized, and standardized, so they can then be shared with management, project team members and so forth, anywhere. Also, the latest compliance updates can be installed at this same central location, so that all users can access the most recent version. Everything can be documented digitally, further easing the compliance burden.

When field service organizations operate at less than maximum effectiveness, many areas of the business are impacted — including customer satisfaction, service and retention levels, as well as overall profitability. While device makers may have been shielded from field service shortfalls in the past because of the insular nature of their business and the high value ascribed to the devices themselves, those days are over.

Now there are more people involved in the device-selection decision than ever before, economics influence a greater portion of the buying process and, thanks in large part to the Affordable Care Act, customer service needs to encompass the entire care continuum and not just physicians and hospitals anymore.

To address these challenges, device makers must streamline and automate as many customer service processes as possible, provide a single source of truth to the field, and give their sales reps a 360° end-to-end view of each customer in real time. No technology can deliver this kind of connected field service intelligence and data integration more effectively than cloud computing.

Cloud computing is capable of integrating data from disparate silos, multiple spreadsheets, email threads, and even social media, making it accessible online via secured portals and dashboards. The result: sales reps can manage sales across multiple channels, products, and geographies, as well as track, navigate, and influence relationships among physicians, facilities, and purchasing organizations. Key metrics such as aggregate physician spend can be accessed in real time. Also, after a sale is made, the convenience of cloud computing simplifies customer service, technical support, and medical device service and repair.

3 Streamline compliance

4 Simplify field service operations

Four ways to navigate the changing medical device landscape

ConclusionThanks to new government emphasis on accountable care, the value of a medical device is no longer solely in the product itself. While clinical efficacy will remain a must, device makers are now tasked (like all other healthcare stakeholders) with achieving the Affordable Care Act’s Triple Aim objectives of improving population health, improving the patient experience in both quality and outcomes, and bending the cost curve. And they must do so while facing strong headwinds in the form of increased regulatory scrutiny and new competition from consumer-savvy companies like Samsung and Verizon.

To survive this perfect storm and position themselves for success in the new healthcare landscape, many device makers are turning to cloud computing to create value. Medical devices that support cloud computing technology can provide a new layer of connected intelligence that bridges the time and distance gap between patients and their care teams, accelerates development and compliance, streamlines operations, and ultimately delivers better accountability for better outcomes.

About Salesforce Service Cloud Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud-computing leader. Our social and mobile cloud technologies and CRM applications help companies connect with customers, partners, and employees in entirely new ways. Salesforce Service Cloud is the world’s #1 customer service app. Built on the Salesforce1 Platform, Salesforce Service Cloud enables medical device companies, suppliers, and providers to reach customers in new ways while making information from patients, plan administrators, and physicians more accessible. By using the cloud to provide real-time data integration, collaboration, and streamlined operations, Salesforce helps provide better outcomes for patients and providers alike.

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© Copyright 2000-2014 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com and the “no software” logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Various trademarks held by their respective owners.* Source: “Medical Companies Prepare for an Innovation Makeover,” PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute, October 2013. ** Source: "Care Coordination for People with Chronic Conditions," Partnership for Solutions, Johns Hopkins University, January 2003.*** Source: “US $1.3 billion: The market for mHealth applications in 2012,” research2guidance, January 2012.