The Medtronic-Economist Impact Whitepaper unveiled at the Medtronic Open Innovation Conference (MAIC 2022) revealed that up to 55% of respondents cited Covid-19 as an enabler of innovative ideas, rather than a detractor.
A reflection of this innovation boom, Medtronic saw overwhelming applications from 323 start-ups and business enterprises from 46 countries across Asia Pacific and beyond vying for a potential collaboration with Medtronic valued up to US$200,000.
Five start-ups were crowned winners of the Medtronic APAC Innovation Challenge at the conference. More details about the winners can be found here. The survey saw a combination of factors encompassing, better government support (38%), greater collaboration with private sector (37%), increased funding availability (36%) and cross-learning platforms between organisations (35%) as the drivers of innovation acceleration.
This led to the observation that a multi-sectoral collaborative approach, led by governments in the region, was a key enabler for driving innovations.
While not all findings were a surprise, the scale of some findings did highlight the magnitude of some issues facing the healthcare sector overall. One such example was the overwhelming response citing recruitment as the leading cause of concern for over 80% of start-ups surveyed.
This echoes the World Health Organization’s (WHO) prediction of a global shortfall of 14.5 million healthcare workers by 20301. This first-ever study on the region’s healthcare technology sector involves inputs from 150 executives from startups and business enterprises in APAC.
The paper also includes in-depth interviews with several industry leaders from the healthcare technology sector as well as from representatives from companies in the technology sector such as SAP.iO Foundries and Microsoft Health.
Chris Lee, President for Medtronic, APAC said, “No one company can do healthcare alone. As the global leader of healthcare technology, Medtronic takes the accountability to lead the conversation and encourage more meaningful collaborations across the innovation ecosystem. That’s why we launched the open innovation platform and hosted today’s conference.
The Medtronic Open Innovation Conference (MAIC 2022) is Medtronic’s first hybid conference held in Singapore, themed ‘Accelerating Healthcare Technology Innovation’