Healthcare regulation: keeping up with new technologies
Published: Wed 17 Feb 2021
In healthcare, there remains a gap between the review of regulations and meeting them in a practical sense. Manufacturers need to fully describe the intended use of their device to allow them to identify the rules that apply, and the compliance that needs to be demonstrated.
In this week’s episode, we continued the conversation with Eleonora Harwich and Claudia Martinez on healthcare regulation. We discuss advice, guidance, and challenges on policy and regulation, keeping up with healthcare technologies while meeting healthcare regulations, and more.
Useful resources
This week, we asked our guests:
- In terms of landscaping, where else could someone look for advice and guidance on which rules to follow?
- What are some challenges that innovators face when it comes to regulation?
- How are regulations and policies changing to accommodate new technologies such as apps and machine learning?
- What’s the relationship between policy and regulation and what does this mean in practice?
- How do you manage the tension between the desire for a pace of change through technology and the ability of regulations to keep up and support it properly?
- How do global health crises impact policy and regulation on innovations?
- How can we take advantage of cutting-edge technologies while meeting all the regulatory obligations?
Meet our guests
Eleonora Harwich
Eleonora is Director of Research at Reform Think Tank. Her work focuses on how tech innovations can help public services deliver better outcomes. She has co-authored papers on AI in the NHS, the value of healthcare data, commercial models in healthcare, the regulation of data-driven technologies and data sharing in the public sector. She is a member of the British Standards Institution’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence, a member of the NIHR Artificial Intelligence Health and Care Award panel, a member of the AI Programme advisory board for the Academic Health Science Network and the London Hub Lead of One HealthTech.
Claudia Martinez
Claudia Martinez was Research Manager and Health Policy Fellow at the London-based public policy Think Tank, Reform, at the time of recording this podcast. At Reform, she undertook research on a variety of areas including how to deliver personalised models of care, the role of data-driven technologies in mental healthcare and implementing digital courts. Claudia worked on an award-winning project in collaboration with NHSX looking at the regulation of data-driven technologies in healthcare. Prior to joining Reform, she was senior policy researcher at Centra Group, the care and support arm of Clarion Housing, where she oversaw the horizon scanning, customer testing and implementation of new telecare and telehealth technologies. She holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Chile and an MSc in Environment, Politics and Globalisation from King’s College London. Claudia is currently Research Programme Manager at the Access to Medicine Foundation.
