From neuromodulation to augmented defibrillation: an unconventional outlook for 2023’s medtech

The months and years since 2020 have been a defining period for the global healthcare industry. Healthcare organisations endured elevated pressure on services in the face of a global pandemic, and, as a result of both this heightened demand and stricter safety guidelines, experienced higher levels of innovation and tech adoption.  

Throughout the quasi-post-pandemic year of 2022, strains have persisted in the healthcare industry that have driven reliance on tech. Labour shortages worldwide have driven many healthcare providers to digitalisation to streamline processes, while a higher volume of admissions — alongside a swelling backlog in the UK’s NHS — have highlighted the need for efficiency gains where possible. 

It comes as no surprise that, according to a report from Bain & Company, 45 percent of healthcare companies increased their tech spend in 2022. Nor is it particularly revelatory that the HIMSS 2022 Future of Healthcare Report indicates a trend towards digital healthcare. What is surprising, however, is the variety of applications that are beginning to emerge as deeptech focuses on addressing some of the healthcare industry’s challenges.  

In November 2022, Web Summit — one of the world’s largest technology conferences — illustrated some of the less conventional areas of health that are beginning to be transformed with medtech. Here are three areas that stood out from the 2022 tech conference:

Neuromodulation rewiring the brain 

Treating neuropathic pain remains one of healthcare’s most difficult tasks, largely due to the complexity of each nerve. In the past decade, transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) has emerged as one experimental field of research into tackling neuropathic pain, as well as some psychiatric diseases, by non-invasively passing weak electrical currents through the brain. This technique is predominately used to enhance research into how the brain works, allowing researchers to effectively monitor and map how specific neurons and brain regions correspond to behavioural changes. Establishing causal links in this way has the potential to greatly enhance research into treatments for neuropathic conditions. 

In addition to the research aspect, there is a growing body of research indicating that tES can have some immediate therapeutic benefit to patients for conditions such as depression and focal cortical epilepsy. However, tES needs to be applied consistently over a set period to deliver potential benefits, which is seldom possible when patients are required to go into a healthcare facility for treatment.  

This is what prompted Spanish medtech company Neuroelectrics to develop a wearable tES device that patients can use at home. The device, Starstim, is a wearable hat fitted with electrodes that deliver currents to the wearer’s brain, while also allowing real-time visualisation of brain activity. For patients, it provides an easy way of completing a course of tES treatment at home; for clinicians, it gives easy access to data that shows brain activity pre-, during and post-stimulation. It’s a further step in the trend towards personalised healthcare, while also supporting research into one of the body’s most complex organs. 

Quantum drug discovery 

Another complex area of research that tech is advancing to support is drug discovery. The process of developing pharmaceutical products to treat diseases is long and complicated, involving significant amounts of testing, modelling and refining. Pharmaceutical companies need to ensure that they can account for the molecular behaviours and interactions of the drugs that they develop, but this currently involves a certain amount of estimation prior to trials taking place.  

The classical computing systems that researchers use to model drug interactions are simply unable to account for every possible molecular interaction in modern medicines. Simulating how molecules within a drug interact with one another over a prolonged timescale is impractically time- and resource-intensive; even more so when you factor in modelling the interactions of drug molecules when they bind with proteins in the human body.  

According to Sabrina Maniscalco, CEO of Algorithmiq, running such simulations would require classical computers with “memories larger than the number of atoms in the universe”. She believes this is reflected in the drug discovery data: “Over the years, there has been a tenfold increase in spend for research and development, but the number of drugs brought to market remains approximately the same.” Maniscalco cites an oversimplification of molecular modelling, to accommodate for hardware limitations, as a reason for this, and also as a reason for why “90 percent of the drugs that we give to our patients do not treat 50 percent of the population.” 

The solution is quantum hardware, which can theoretically provide much more accurate simulations of drug interactions by virtue of how they operate. The way in which quantum bits (qubits) function in series allows for substantially more possibilities to be computed in a fraction of the time, while using significantly less computing resources. As such systems are utilised by drug researchers, the potential to identify new drugs that are safe for medical use increases. 

During a panel discussion at Web Summit, Maniscalco stated that we will “probably have to wait 10 to 15 years” before we see scalable photon quantum systems come to market. Despite this, quantum devices are already making inroads in helping researchers quantify drug-protein interactions, showing that researchers are starting to become able to leverage quantum devices. 

Augmenting healthcare with AR 

Far removed from the research and clinical environments, Web Summit highlighted an interesting development in the telehealth trend. During a keynote at the event, Dr. Atul Gupta, Chief Medical Officer, Image Guide Therapy at Philips, led with an example of how augmented reality (AR) can help to support emergency caregivers to properly treat individuals while awaiting the arrival of emergency services. 

The example demonstrated how AR functionality can work with automated external defibrillators (AEDs). An AR interface could help caregivers to place pads in the right locations on the body. The pads, containing sensors, can identify if there is a shockable heart rhythm in the individual — if not, the AR lenses can support the caregiver on how to effectively deliver CPR — and deliver a shock accordingly.  

Dr Gupta gave this example with the disclaimer that it is future medtech, and not something that is yet ready for the market. He did, however, offer a glimpse into the AR in healthcare projects Philips is presently working on: in particular, systems that effectively equip surgeons with an AR heads-up display of vital patient data and visualisations of the part of the body being worked on. Similarly, Philips is looking at how AR can help practitioners to remotely assist caregivers in properly administering treatment or rudimentary procedures at patient homes, showing another evolution in the telehealth trend. 

The past three years have been a turning point for tech adoption in healthcare, and it’s clear that medtech is only going to continue advancing in the years ahead. As the industry moves out of the shadow of the pandemic, it’s important that organisations continue to invest in and investigate new technological innovations to overcome longstanding challenges.