Ageing populations, persistent cost inflation and practitioner shortages are combining to place healthcare systems under rising strain across developed markets. Transformational innovations in medical technology (medtech) are helping to address these challenges by improving patient safety, enabling quicker recoveries from surgery and delivering efficiencies for healthcare providers.

Source: McKinsey & Company, 2023: Medtech Pulse: Thriving in the next decade.
Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding.
*Average percentage of each condition’s contributed proportion of all disability-adjusted life years and deaths.
† Including all global medtech pipeline products, per GlobalData, excluding those in early development (largely academic). Excluding in vitro diagnostics and hospital supplies.
“Other” includes: nutritional and metabolic diseases; wounds and injuries; urologic diseases; and dental diseases.
Subhead: Breakdown of global medtech product pipeline & unmet healthcare needs by disease, 2019
Overview: This pair of charts compares the percentage breakdown of global medtech product pipeline, by disease, versus the percentage breakdown of unmet healthcare needs, by disease.
Secondary subtitles:
Pipeline products (%)*
Disability-adjusted life years and deaths (%)†
Category one: Cardiovascular & cerebrovascular
Category two: Oncology
Category three: Nervous system
Category four: Orthopedic
Category five: Respiratory tract
Category six: Other
Pipeline products | Unmet needs | |
---|---|---|
Cardiovascular & cerebrovascular | 31 | 34 |
Oncology | 16 | 24 |
Nervous system | 19 | 14 |
Orthopedic | 11 | 13 |
Respiratory tract | 7 | 5 |
Other | 15 | 10 |
Overall, this chart shows that the global medtech product pipeline broadly reflects the most pressing unmet healthcare needs, focused on cardiovascular & cerebrovascular and oncology-related issues.
Improving patient safety
Emerging medical devices and new procedural methods are yielding advances in patient outcomes and expanding access to treatments. In one example, the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) – a condition experienced by around 5% of over-45s that causes an irregular heartbeat – has been transformed by an ablation solution developed by US company Boston Scientific.1
Historically, AF has been hard to treat among certain patient demographics as legacy ablation procedures, involving extreme heat or cold, can damage surrounding tissue. Boston’s Farapulse system has transformed AF treatment by using a new method called pulsed field ablation (PFA).2 Under PFA, electrical pulses target specific cell membranes without damaging surrounding tissue components.3 As a result, sicker and older patients can be treated for AF, improving their quality of life and reducing risks of stroke.
Enabling quicker recoveries from surgery
Advances in robotics are meanwhile being leveraged to reduce the negative impacts of surgery, accelerating patient recovery and ultimately delivering efficiencies for healthcare systems.
US company Intuitive Surgical is the leader in developing robotic products for minimally invasive surgery (MIS), an alternative to open surgery that involves smaller incisions to reduce pain and the risk of complications.4 Aggregated data for existing studies shows that more access to Intuitive’s robotically-assisted MIS results in fewer conversions to open procedures and shorter hospital stays than manual keyhole surgery.5
Adoption of this technology also widens the number of surgeons able to perform MIS procedures, meaning hospitals can offer minimally-invasive surgery in greater numbers.6 This expands access to advanced treatment and quicker recoveries.
Delivering healthcare system efficiencies
Delivering modern healthcare is notoriously labour and resource intensive. Healthcare spending growth outpaced inflation across the OECD group of high-income countries each year between 2007 and 2021, and by 2.2 percentage points on average.7
Solutions that speed up common surgeries like cataract removals, of which there were an estimated 31mn worldwide in 2024, can create scope for healthcare systems to treat more patients with the same resources, helping to alleviate inflationary pressures.8
Alcon, the global leader in eye care, has pioneered a radically more efficient system for treating cataracts, which can eventually lead to blindness.9 The Swiss company’s UNITY Vitreoretinal Cataract System is designed to double the speed of a key step in cataract surgery, as part of a more streamlined workflow. By improving operating room throughput, innovations like these contribute to a more efficient healthcare system.
Meeting patient needs
It should be unsurprising that medtech innovation is focused on the areas of greatest unmet patient need. Products targeting cardiovascular disease and cancers account for almost half of the industry’s product pipeline.10
By focusing on improving patient outcomes, accelerating post-operation recoveries and delivering efficiencies in the largest addressable markets, we believe medtech innovators can target vast opportunities within the US$10tn global healthcare industry.11 The rollout of disruptive technologies stands to not only benefit patients and the healthcare system, but also medtech leaders and their investors over product lifecycles.
1 British Heart Foundation, 2024: Expert tips on living with atrial fibrillation
2 Boston Scientific, January 2025: Farapulse Pulsed Field Ablation
3 National Library of Medicine, 2009: Non-Thermal Irreversible Electroporation: Novel Technology for Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Ablation
4 Intuitive Surgical is the world’s largest company focused on soft tissue robotics by revenues, as at January 2025
5 Cleveland Clinic, 2024: Robotic Surgery
6 Intuitive, 2023: Environmental, Social and Governance Report
7 OECD, 2023: Health care financing in times of high inflation
8 Alcon, 2024: Alcon’s Latest Equipment Breakthrough Technologies, Unity VCS and Unity CS, Receive U.S. FDA 510(k) Clearance
9 Alcon is the world’s largest company focused on eye care products by revenues, as at January 2025
10 McKinsey & Company, 2023: Medtech Pulse: Thriving in the next decade
11 World Economic Forum, 2024: Is this how healthcare will be optimized in the future?
References to specific securities are for illustrative purposes only and should not be considered as a recommendation to buy or sell. Nothing presented herein is intended to constitute investment advice and no investment decision should be made solely based on this information. Nothing presented should be construed as a recommendation to purchase or sell a particular type of security or follow any investment technique or strategy. Information presented herein reflects Impax Asset Management’s views at a particular time. Such views are subject to change at any point and Impax Asset Management shall not be obligated to provide any notice. Any forward-looking statements or forecasts are based on assumptions and actual results are expected to vary. While Impax Asset Management has used reasonable efforts to obtain information from reliable sources, we make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of third-party information presented herein. No guarantee of investment performance is being provided and no inference to the contrary should be made.