Enterprise Ireland’s Deirdre Glenn and Minister Robert Troy. Image: Maxwell Photography
A new strategic collaboration between Enterprise Ireland and US Northwell Health will provide Irish medtechs with international opportunities to scale.
A new partnership between Enterprise Ireland and New York-based healthcare provider Northwell Health aims to spotlight Irish medtechs and help them break into the US market.
The strategic collaboration was announced at Enterprise Ireland’s Med in Ireland conference, which is running today and tomorrow (3 and 4 November). Healthcare experts from all over the world are attending the event. Its organisers hope it will provide an opportunity for Irish medtech innovators to connect with international healthcare providers.
Addressing the conference, Stephen Creaner, Enterprise Ireland’s executive director said the deal “further validates what Ireland has to offer in healthcare provision and medical technology worldwide” and presents “significant opportunities for innovative Irish companies to commercialise and co-develop new innovations and enter the US market”.
“Enterprise Ireland puts a strong focus on driving this innovation agenda in the medtech industry and facilitating successful partnerships between indigenous Irish companies and influential global healthcare systems and medtech manufacturers,” Creaner continued.
Northwell Health is a major healthcare provider on the east coast of the US. It has 23 hospitals, 77,000 employees and more than 16,000 affiliated physicians providing healthcare to around 2m people.
Building on an earlier agreement
Enterprise Ireland’s new partnership builds on an earlier agreement with Northwell Health, which saw the US company engage with Irish medtech businesses and provide them with access to clinicians and key decision makers across their extensive healthcare network.
The partnership will provide Ireland’s medtech companies with the chance to develop and commercialise new medical technologies as well as collaborate in joint ventures on an international scale.
Northwell Health’s executive director of global strategic partnerships, Elaine Brennan, said: “With these collaborations we hope to commercialise medical technologies to benefit patients around the globe. The strategic alliance with Enterprise Ireland is one of many overseas relationships in which Northwell is engaging as it takes a global view to identifying the most innovative solutions and partnerships.”
Enterprise Ireland has its eye on firmly trained on the future with the theme of this year’s conference entitled ‘Medtech’s Big Moment’ – a reference to the role Ireland can play in the world’s exiting of the pandemic.
The conference will focus on some of the major industry shifts shaping the post-pandemic healthcare world including the move to preventative care, the role of digitalisation in the shift to healthcare outside of hospital settings, the emergence of environmentally sustainable technologies, and the development of new distribution and inventory management models to address supply chain weaknesses.
“Med in Ireland is a hugely important event for international healthcare providers and manufactures to engage with Ireland’s medtech industry,” said Minister for trade promotion Robert Troy, TD, at the launch of the conference.
“The sector is hugely important for the Irish economy, employing 45,000 people. It is also making a major contribution to international healthcare, responding to Covid-19 but also to the transformation of healthcare. Years of both Government and industry investment has fuelled the resilient response to the pandemic and created a concentrated community of innovation and expertise within Ireland that is breaking new ground in healthcare,” Troy said.
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