Medtech’s Biggest Question in 2026: Device Company or Data Company

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Key Takeaways

• Medical technology ("medtech") leaders face a critical juncture as devices evolve into data platforms. This will require a new approach to leveraging clinical, operational and real-world data (RWD).
• Leaders from Terumo Neuro and B. Braun of America say companies that leverage RWD will outpace competitors, driving faster time-to-market and improved patient outcomes.
• By partnering with Premier, medical device companies can leverage actionable data insights to enhance product design, streamline workflows and drive long-term success in an increasingly data-driven healthcare industry.

The next wave of medical device innovation arrives in 2026 - and it's data-driven. Devices alone no longer define value. Understanding how products perform in hospitals, influence workflows and impact outcomes is now essential to achieving both clinical and commercial success.

With a national network of member hospitals and health systems, Premier can offer medtech innovators access to real-world data(RWD), and provide valuable insight into provider alignment and help identify systemwide operational needs to turn complexity into clarity.

Two leaders, Carsten Schroeder, President and CEO of Terumo Neuro, and Rob Albert, CEO of B. Braun of America, offered compelling insight into how medical device companies can unlock new value through data as well as how Premier is helping accelerate this transformation.

Turning Data into Strategic Advantage: A Blueprint for Medtech Leaders

Hospitals and health systems capture vast amounts of clinical, operational and outcome data, but medical device and life sciences companies often struggle to see the full picture: how devices perform across different patient populations, how workflows vary across sites and how these variations affect outcomes. Without this insight, designing better devices, supporting regulatory submissions or proving value becomes an uphill battle.

Terumo Neuro, a medical device company specializing in neurovascular treatment, navigates this complexity by combining rigorous clinical evidence with real-world performance data to inform both product design and regulatory strategy. "The monetization is not getting money for the data you generate," said Schroeder. "It's getting to market earlier. You help more patients sooner."

The path to realizing this value begins with a mindset shift. Before transformation can take hold, companies must rethink their relationship with data. Both leaders emphasized that medtech companies often overestimate how much new data they need - and underestimate the insight already embedded in their existing work.

For Schroeder, the first step is inward: "Start with what you already have."
Most companies possess more usable clinical and operational data than they realize.

For Albert, success depends on empathy and alignment: "Design data platforms around the provider and the patient - not around the manufacturer."

Premier mirrors this approach by providing companies such as Terumo Neuro access to de-identified RWD. Premier's data has, in some cases, already been used to support and supplement med device product regulatory submissions. Using Premier data in this manner may give innovators the ability to streamline the regulatory review process. They can:

• Compare trial assumptions against real-world performance.
• Identify real-world variation against clinical trial data.
• Potentially build stronger, more credible evidence packages.
• Identifying safety data for underrepresented or underserved patient populations.

As a result, medtech companies may gain a smoother regulatory path and a clearer understanding of how a device behaves across diverse hospital environments and patient populations.

Improving Patient Experience Through Workflow Insight and Standardization

Leading medical technology company B. Braun focuses on one of the most common - and deceptively complex - procedures in healthcare: IV catheter insertion. More than 90 percent of acute-care patients receive an IV, yet hospitals often lack visibility into how consistently their teams perform the procedure.

"Anything more than one attempt is not good," Albert said. "It's a pain point for every hospital - and most don't even measure how well they're doing."

B. Braun created a performance improvement program that blends workflow analysis, an app-based checklist and ongoing clinical education. Hospitals using the program have seen dramatic results: One eliminated 120,000 unnecessary needle sticks in a single year - a direct improvement to patient experience and a reduction in wasted supplies.

"Ultimately, we help customers use fewer catheters because they're more successful the first time: Better for the patient, better for efficiency, better for cost," Albert said.

It's a model rooted in transparency and continuous improvement - the same type of data-driven partnership that Premier fosters across its supplier network.

Through its aggregated, de-identified healthcare data assets, Premier helps health systems contextualize performance improvement initiatives within larger clinical and operational trends, supporting informed decision-making around standardization and care delivery.

With this level of visibility, hospitals can implement solutions across entire systems - not just individual departments. Meanwhile, medtech innovators can validate the value of their programs with real data from real care environments.

Connecting Devices, Decision Support and Real-World Performance

In Terumo Neuro's neurovascular portfolio, data-enabled innovation is rapidly expanding. Advanced imaging software now allows clinicians to overlay device models onto real patient anatomy, improving procedural planning and device selection. Some emerging products even incorporate sensors capable of tracking blood flow or tissue response.

Bringing solutions to market is only the beginning. Advancing impact depends on generating high-quality real-world evidence (RWE) that demonstrates performance across diverse patient populations and care settings. Premier supports RWE development, with its trusted health system network and artificial intelligence (AI)-enableddatabase, which can potentially enable suppliers to:

• Analyze extensive datasets for earlier patient identification and previously unidentified risk factors.
• Accurately and more efficiently identify clinical trial participants from diverse populations who are likely to benefit or may be at higher risk.
• Forecast the pharmacokinetic profiles of drugs and predict device performance in various patient populations to determine appropriate dosing regimens and care.
• Optimize clinical trial site selection, "flipping the funnel" to recruit based on where patients are versus where relationships exist - and based on predictive analytics of sites' historical performance.
• Understand how post-market therapeutics and devices perform across diverse populations, helping to ensure they meet safety and performance standards in varied real-world conditions.

Revealing Operational Insight Hidden in Plain Sight

Some of the most valuable data opportunities in medtech live outside the clinical environment - in logistics, purchasing and device utilization.

Albert offered an example from B. Braun's pump technology: Large health systems may manage tens of thousands of IV pumps, but many do not know where all of them are at any given time. Pumps get moved, borrowed, hoarded or misplaced, leading health systems to purchase more equipment than they need.

"People may order 6,000 (IV pumps) because they don't know where 2,000 of them are," Albert said.

B. Braun's Dose Track Enterprise platform allows hospitals to monitor pump locations in real time. Hospitals that adopt the system often discover they can operate safely with far fewer pumps, freeing capital and reducing unnecessary spending.

Premier takes this further by integrating supply chain data, purchasing patterns and utilization behavior across 4,350 hospitals. With this broader view, hospitals can see not only where their pumps are but how they compare to similar organizations and how purchasing decisions across their network influence performance. For suppliers, this clarity helps demonstrate total cost-of-ownership benefits, strengthening the business case for innovation.

Looking Ahead: The Age of Device-Plus-Data

Neither leader believes medtech will evolve into a pure data industry - nor should it. Devices will remain at the core, but the future will be defined by the intelligence that surrounds them.

"The next five years will be device plus data," Schroeder said.

Albert sees the same trajectory: "You can't disconnect the two. The companies that figure out how to get value out of the data are the ones that win."

This is precisely where Premier's partnership model shines. By connecting RWD, operational insight and provider trust at scale, Premier helps medtech companies build smarter, more integrated solutions that resonate with both clinicians and administrators.

In an industry moving quickly toward device-plus-data, Premier offers what every innovator needs most: a trusted partner with the scale, insight and alignment to make meaningful transformation possible.

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