SmartTRAK reports from the recent Wounds UK conference and discovers optimistic resilience in the face of challenging conditions.

SmartTRAK forecasts a challenging future for the UK Advanced Dressings Market. The UK has accessible outpatient reimbursement for dressings, has minimal higher-priced technologies such as Skin Substitutes and is the home market for two of the biggest global dressing companies. So why does this market show such low growth potential?

At the recent Wounds UK 2024 event, in an uncharacteristically sunny Harrogate, UK, SmartTRAK explored what is driving these variances and found a market in a period of change, as companies address commercial challenges with optimistic resilience, focusing on the following key topics:

• Pricing and Contracts
  • The fall had seen large tenders completed for The NHS Supply Chain and NHS Wales. These offered the first opportunity for significant price reviews for dressings in the hospital channel since COVID-19. Most companies that SmartTRAK spoke to anticipate prices to ... (read more)
• Wound Clinics
  • Private wound clinics continue to grow in the UK. The National Health Service (NHS) has been under significant pressure since COVID-19, and members of the public are increasingly open to ... (read more)
• Lack of Product Innovation
  • There was a noticeable lack of new innovative products at the conference, with leading companies primarily focusing on ... (read more)

Click the button below to download and read the complete "UK Market Growth Undermined by Advanced Dressings Challenges" perspective article by Kris Flinn, SmartTRAK Senior Analyst - Wound.

SmartTRAK looks at the market’s response to the recently finalized LCDs and the potential impact on the US Market for Skin Substitutes.

The popularity of direct anterior approach THA is driving new product introductions.

With the exploding growth of enabling technology, much of the focus on implant solutions in recent years has been on knee replacement systems compatible with enabling technologies. At the same time, minimally invasive techniques for hip replacement using the direct anterior approach (DAA) have rapidly been gaining favor among surgeons. More companies are designing implant solutions to facilitate DAA, for use with and without enabling technologies. At this year’s American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) Annual Meeting, manufacturers were showcasing not one, but four new hip systems specifically designed to facilitate the direct anterior approach. Because surgeon adoption of this technique appears to be accelerating, it is potentially a significant opportunity for implant companies. In a 2022 survey of its members, AAHKS found that DAA was the most utilized for primary total hip arthroplasty THA (56%), a significant increase from 2018 when 40% of AAHKS surgeons indicated they used an anterior approach.

The introduction of these new stems almost plays out like a David vs Goliath story with two smaller US market players, NextStep Arthropedix and Corin, facing two of the four largest, Zimmer Biomet and Smith+Nephew. In this downloadable article, SmartTRAK looks at these new stems hitting the US market, including a brief history of the stems, their features and benefits, and the market positioning for each.

Dr. Chris Jeffery, founder and CEO of Convergence Medical, discusses the V01, the world's first arthroscopic surgical robot.

In a recent interview with SmartTRAK, Dr. Chris Jeffery, the founder and CEO of Convergence Medical, discussed the V01, the world’s first dedicated arthroscopic surgical robot. In the interview, Dr. Jeffery shared insights into the V01’s novel design, business model, and technological advancements that position it as the next evolution in arthroscopic innovation. The V01 received FDA breakthrough designation in 2023 and is on track for FDA clearance and a US launch in late 2025.

Click on the following video to watch the interview (59:11 min). A complete transcript of the interview is available here. For more details, interview topics by timecode are provided below.

Interview Topics By Timecode:

• 00:50 Dr Jeffery’s background.
• 10:00 V01 overview.
• 20:25 Performing a repair with the V01.
• 26:50 V01 cost.
• 36:10 Surgeon feedback.
• 40:10 Importance of an arthroscopy-specific robot.
• 42:40 Novel design of the V01.
• 44:45 Commercial path.

Click the button below to download a complete transcript of SmartTRAK's interview with Dr. Chris Jeffrey, CEO of Convergence Medical Sciences, conducted by Andy Knapik, Senior Analyst, Soft Tissue Fixation and Arthroscopic Enabling Technologies.

SmartTRAK examines the market dynamics, innovations and growth drivers for Negative Pressure Wound Therapy.

Since KCI (now  Solventum) introduced the wound V.A.C. to the market in 1996, traditional Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (tNPWT) has become the standard of care in hospitals for the treatment of hard-to-heal wounds .  While tNPWT has and will continue to experience low-single-digit revenue growth over the next several years, most of the growth in this space has been in single-use NPWT (sNPWT). According to SmartTRAK's US External Devices Market Overview, the US Market for sNPWT is forecasted to grow at a 5-year CAGR of roughly +13% . 

 

In this article, SmartTRAK provides an overview of the market dynamics impacting both the tNPWT and sNPWT segments of the US External Devices Market, including:

• Traditional Negative Pressure
  • Solventum and Smith+Nephew (SNN) are two key players in the tNPWT category, with a combined US market share of almost ... (read more)
    
• Single-Use Negative Pressure
  
  • Like the tNPWT market, both Solventum and SNN are key players in the sNPWT segment, together owning the vast majority of the market. sNPWT has been attracting a lot of interest from wound care companies, large and small, due to its sustained double-digit growth globally. SmartTRAK identifies and discusses three market strategies that are currently playing out in sNPWT as companies position themselves to capture share in this fast-growing segment. They are:
    
    • Large Dressing Companies Expanding into the sNPWT Adjacency
    • Start-Ups Focus on Pump-Free Products.
    • Growing the Market Through Expanded Use, Clinical Evidence ... (read more)

Click the button below to access and read the complete "Negative Pressure: Still Innovating, Growing and Expanding" article by Jay Merkel, SmartTRAK Sr Analyst, which highlights key large studies on the use of sNPWT in 2024, breaking them out into the studies that show benefits and the studies with moderate or no benefits.

New spine technologies "pushed the envelope" at MNVC

The Musculoskeletal New Ventures Conference (MNVC) is an annual meeting where early and late-stage companies present their ideas. This meeting occurred in Memphis, Tennessee, from October 28 - 30, with a broad mix of attendees, including surgeons, venture capitalists, the medical device industry and researchers. Forty companies presented this year, a record number for this meeting, focused exclusively on the musculoskeletal industry. In this article, SmartTRAK highlights six companies with new technologies to "push the envelope" in the US Spinal Hardware Market, which SmartTRAK estimates is growing at a 5-year CAGR of +4.7%.

This downloadable article provides an in-depth look at the following six companies' innovative new technologies: