2020 represented a year of great upheaval in the healthcare industry. With the COVID-19 pandemic came a host of unique and unprecedented challenges, from nationwide lockdowns to social distancing measures, impacting every aspect of healthcare provision globally.
Within the medtech industry, the prioritization of COVID-19 patients — coupled with rigorous safety protocols and resource allocation measures to ensure supply of necessary products — led to substantial delays in elective and non-urgent procedures. Clinical trials, most mergers and acquisitions and non-critical product launches were also largely paused or delayed. As public health measures continued and caseloads and hospital pressures declined in mid-2020, deferred procedures resumed, and procedure volumes rebounded in Q3 and Q4 2020. That said, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in many countries late in 2020 and into 2021 led to some renewed pressures on procedure volumes and other non-urgent activities.
In this report, we provide a retrospective on key medtech trends in 2021 as well as insights on the current state of COVID-19 vaccination worldwide, followed by seven factors that Clarivate analysts believe will be key for medtech markets in 2022.