How meaningful engagement with patients, clinicians, and the public ensures MedTech products meet real-world needs and accelerates NHS adoption.
Too often, healthcare innovations are developed within small, closed groups of experts, with minimal input from the people who will actually use or prescribe them. While these experts hold essential knowledge, their perspective alone isn’t enough.
The consequences of this are serious. If MedTech companies fail to engage the very people who will prescribe, use, or benefit from their innovations, adoption becomes an uphill battle.
Put simply, even the most advanced health technologies will struggle to succeed if they don’t align with real-world clinical and patient needs.
So, why does early and meaningful engagement matter?
Here are five key reasons why involving the right stakeholders from the start can make the difference between a MedTech innovation that thrives—and one that struggles to gain traction:
Routes to successful adoption and scaling in the NHS rely heavily on a practical evidence base. To accelerate your route to NHS adoption, you must provide robust evidence that demonstrates your MedTech innovation:
"Collecting comprehensive insights from all stakeholders early protects you from costly setbacks later."
Narrow datasets alone aren't sufficient to qualify innovations for adoption. Engagement must be deep and meaningful to generate rich, credible evidence.
By gathering and learning from the thoughts and views of all stakeholders from the beginning, MedTechs will effectively safeguard themselves from needing to go back to the drawing board at the final hurdle.
Investing in product development without understanding whether it truly meets the diverse needs of users and clinicians results in a minimum viable product (MVP) that may be unusable. Valuable funding can be wasted prematurely if the initial product isn’t informed by comprehensive stakeholder insights.
Early and continuous stakeholder research ensures your initial MVP is fit for purpose, built on solid foundations, and conserves resources for meaningful advancements.
Why would clinicians champion your MedTech innovation if they haven’t been involved in its design or user testing? Secure clinician advocacy early by aligning closely with real clinical needs.
Healthcare professionals value involvement in research and development when they see their feedback shaping the final product. Meaningful clinician engagement is critical to real-world success.
Listening to the patient voice has been an increasingly urgent priority in healthcare over the past five years. But co-designing with patients alone isn’t enough—true best practice involves a combination of patient, healthcare staff, and public engagement to shape solutions that are both effective and widely adoptable.
The NHS is moving firmly in this direction. Lord Darzi’s report called for “re-engaging staff and re-empowering patients”, emphasising the need for collaborative innovation in healthcare. This shift is set to become even more prominent in the NHS’s upcoming 10-year health plan, where co-production and inclusivity will likely play a key role in shaping future MedTech adoption.
"Ignoring this trend puts MedTech companies at risk of falling behind."
Those who fail to prioritise meaningful engagement won’t just stand out—they’ll stand out for the wrong reasons.
A core NHS priority right now is to correct health inequalities, and this starts with considering the needs of diverse populations in your innovations. Even if you are a MedTech company that does include the people who would benefit from using your innovation, are you engaging with a diverse spectrum of users with differences in:
If your innovation doesn’t address how it can work across varied populations and tackle the diversity of needs across a range of groups, then it will be deprioritised for other alternatives.
In 2023-24, Thiscovery partnered with Q Lab and the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, engaging 80 patients and 40 renal clinicians in designing future remote monitoring health technology for kidney function.
The result? Rich insights from those living with kidney disease and clinicians who treat them, culminating in a practical, published guide for MedTech developers, evaluators, NHS commissioners, auditors, and improvers.
Contact our MedTech Insight and Innovation Team today to discover how we can help.
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