Health innovation is a team sport: Niklas Blomberg on the future of Europe’s medtech I Transcript

Davidson Leite

Welcome to Medtech ON AIR, the podcast by MedTech Europe, the trade association representing the voice of the medical technology industry in Europe.

This episode is part of a series recorded live from The MedTech Forum 2026 in Stockholm, Sweden. And since we were right there on the Forum floor, you might notice it's a little livelier and noisier than our studio episodes. We think that energy is part of what makes the series so special.

Today, our guest is Niklas Blomberg, Executive Director of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). IHI is Europe's flagship public-private partnership for health research and innovation, where MedTech Europe plays a central role along with industry, academia and the public sector.

We cover a lot of ground, why health innovation is a team sport, what's really holding back the journey from innovation to patient access, and why the European health data space and AI could be the biggest opportunities of the next 12 months.

Niklas also shares a topic he believes isn't getting nearly enough attention. And we think you will agree it deserves a lot more airtime. Whether you are in industry policy or healthcare delivery, this one is for you. Stay with us!

I'm here with Niklas Blomberg. Niklas, do you want to introduce yourself, so our listeners understand who we're speaking to today?

Niklas Blomberg

Hi, yes, thank you. Yes, Niklas Blomberg. I'm the executive director of IHI Innovative Health Initiative, a European public-private partnership. And of course, MedTech Europe is one of the key partners in that partnership, with a lot of engagement from MedTech Europe and the MedTech Europe members.

Davidson Leite

All right, excellent. But then Niklas, I understand that this is your current position and of course your main focus now at MedTech Forum, but you've been working with life science research for the past 24 years, correct?

Niklas Blomberg

Yes, and it's really interesting. I've worked, I mean, I started out as a scientist, I moved to the private sector and worked with a pharmaceutical company for a long time, so about 15 years of my career. Then I moved over to the public sector and ran a research infrastructure on data and set that up in the UK. And now you can see the effort is coming full circle. It's the public sector, it's the private sector, and now it's a public-private partnership.

Davidson Leite

Excellent, excellent, super inspiring. And then now, considering that you're a Swedish national and we're here in Stockholm, how inspired are you feeling about the MedTech Forum 2026?

Niklas Blomberg

I mean, it's really nice to be here in Stockholm. It's a great place to be. I'm not from Stockholm, it's not my city, but it's nice to be here. There was a wonderful introduction this morning and I think it really brought home how important the medtech sector is to Sweden and to Swedish healthcare. And I think what I found really interesting, and I had a lot of really interesting conversations here, is really how also at the national and at the regional level, the idea of public-private partnerships are coming up. And so I think we're sitting here at the MedTech Forum in the booth. It's a wonderful atmosphere. And you see next to us the Swedish booth, it really is a public-private partnership. And you see the logos of all the small companies and some of the quite big Swedish companies working together both as an industry but also with the healthcare sector and the regulators in Sweden to really move the sector forward. I think that's really what we'd like to do also at the European level is to see what we can do bridging that divide that often exists between public health care, academic researchers, regulators, and the industry product development in medtech. And if we can bring that together, I think that's a real opportunity for Europe. It's a real opportunity for many of the regions and the countries in Europe.

Davidson Leite

So, really continuing that collaboration journey, right? So bringing all the actors together with different perspectives, so we bring progress, right?

Niklas Blomberg

Yeah, so I like to, I mean, it's a bit of a cliche, but I like to think about health innovation as a team sport. So there will be industry and industrial capabilities, the industrial product development capabilities doesn't exist in the public sector. I mean, you can't build an X-ray machine at the basement of a university. You can't develop prosthetics. in a university lab, you need the industrial capabilities for that. But at the same time, you can't do that in a vacuum. And I think if we look at the challenges of European health care now, it is really in that interplay. And it's beyond products in a way. It's how do we get the new solutions, the new innovations embedded into the patient journey? How do we look at care pathways? How do we understand how that sort of whole innovation, not only where the solutions fit in, but really how do you engineer the patient journey through the healthcare systems? How do you understand where they are? How can you personalise prevention? Can you diagnose people earlier? Can you then have some targeted interventions that actually keep them out of the healthcare system? So I think there is a lot of opportunities. Those things can't be done in isolation. We really need to have that partnership here.

Davidson Leite

Yeah, I completely agree. And then you already mentioned one of the stands, but I also know that you're a speaker. So maybe could you mention the sessions that you're speaking in? What are the topics that you're bringing to the discussion? Yeah, your expectations and highlights for this year's forum.

Niklas Blomberg

Yeah, so we have, I mean, medtech is a really important player. We have over 30 projects, over two-thirds of our portfolio have medtech involvement. So, of course, we have lots of sessions here at the MedTech Forum. I've been in one this morning on real-world evidence, real-world data. I think that's a great example with the IDERHA project, how you really have to bring together the perspective of the regulator, the perspective of industry, the perspective of patients and the public sector. And if you look at the panel, that was indeed how the panel looked. There is five different stakeholders on the stage. And I think we're all conscious that we only hold one piece of the final puzzle. This afternoon, we have a panel with the project on early feasibility studies. So how can we bring devices into patients earlier? How can medical technology do effective feasibility studies in Europe? That's happening in other parts of the world. There is nothing in particular that makes it impossible in Europe. We do have the regulation to make it happen. But there is also nothing in particular that makes it easy. And I think that's what the project is about. It's about having the regulators, the patients, the health care systems and the device makers, the med tech industry, looking at how can we actually make this happen in Europe and how can we make sure that the innovations that are developed here are also brought into the studies early in the European healthcare systems.

Davidson Leite

Excellent. And then considering then this landscape, all of these different perspectives, what do you believe that is the most pressing challenge currently shaping the policy that the regulatory or the market environment in medtech?

Niklas Blomberg

Yeah, so I am not a medtech expert, but from an innovation, and if I listen to our projects, I think there are a couple of areas. So there are lots of opportunities in the early technology development. I think we're capitalised the technical. I mean, the pace of innovation is just staggering. And I think we have some absolutely fascinating project here today. I think there is a booth with the intensive care unit of the future, which I think is absolutely fascinating.

Davidson Leite

Super impressive.

Niklas Blomberg

So I don't think innovation is the bottleneck. I think it really is that journey from innovation to patient uptake. We talk a lot about regulation, of course, the revision of the MDR. There will be several sessions on this. I think we're contributing to some of them. But I think another area, and this is when I look at our projects, probably the fastest growing area of projects is really understanding those care pathways and how can you use the care pathways in the quite diverse healthcare systems in Europe to assess both the value of the innovation, but also how do you then drive that to access and reimbursement? And so I think those are probably the two biggest bottlenecks to innovation is around how do we get quick clinical studies up in Europe so we make Europe a primary destination for the clinical studies? How do we take that to a regulatory approval so we can get it to patients? But also how do we define that whole patient journey so that we can understand value as a path to reimbursement.

Davidson Leite

Excellent. Excellent. But now moving from bottlenecks to opportunities, what do you believe to be the greatest opportunity for progress over the next 12 months? And what would help unlock it then?

Niklas Blomberg

So in the next 12 months, one of the big transformations that's happening in Europe right now is the European health data space. And so coming back to this morning's panel, I think one of the conclusions coming out was really how do we move from regulation to implementation? How do we actually make this operational? How do we set up the capabilities that actually allow both academic researchers and industry to make use of the European data? And how do you actually put that in the context of regulatory and HDA decision-making. So I think that that's a big opportunity. It's an imperative. It's a really critical one. I think the other one, which is partly linked, is around AI, of course, we see. I don't think we fund a single project that doesn't have a major artificial intelligence work package. It's just fundamental to how we do medical research today. And so how do we get that right? And how do we make sure that the innovations doesn't trip up in the rapidly changing regulatory landscape for AI? I think that's another really important opportunity.

Davidson Leite

Absolutely. I think that AI is top of mind for any industry. And for us, it's even more relevant because we're talking patients, we're talking personal data. So there is definitely a huge opportunity there, but we just want to get it right. And then if we flip the table, what is the topic that you believe that is not being discussed enough? If we would say one thing, what should be people talking about more at the MedTech Forum and beyond?

Niklas Blomberg

So I think we have a little stealth topic, which is not so little, but I feel very warmly about. And I think we're, and so that's around clean and competitive manufacturing, clean and competitive health care, if you wish. I know MedTech Europe published a report about, I think it was launched at last year's MedTech Forum. We've had a lot of discussions around that and I'm really happy to see we've launched a whole suite of projects around sustainable health care, looking at what are the different aspects of health care. And there is another one coming after summer that looks at PFAS, so these forever chemicals. And I think for Europe, if we want, we don't only want to have research development. We also want to have the manufacturing and that space in Europe. For industry, I think that clean and competitive manufacturing, understanding the supply chains is really pivotal. It's also part of procurement. If we look at healthcare overall, I think it's a sector that do need to look at the whole greening agenda. And I'm really happy to see that we have a set of partnerships that are driving that agenda forward.

Davidson Leite

Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think that, so the report you mentioned is that decarbonising the industry, right? the roadmap that MedTech Europe published last year. And it is really interesting and exciting to see that sustainability, this kind of discussion is no longer optional, right, and imperative. And it goes hand in hand with competitiveness, which is another big topic that we're discussing here.

Niklas Blomberg

Exactly. I don't think it's clean or competitive. It's clean and competitive. And that will have to be the future. But I'm also really pleased that we managed to take some of the things that came in the report and then transfer that to actual projects and not only write reports, but trying to do something.

Davidson Leite

Yeah, it's what you said as well. It's about moving from discussion to implementation, right? Really bring things to action. And then if you think of actions then, talking implementation, what would be the one action that you would like the stakeholders attending the forum to take after this event?

Niklas Blomberg

So I think it is actually that to move and it's we're talking and it's been a big transformation in Europe. I think we should be really happy with that, there isn't a competition between good health for Europeans, equitable health care for Europeans and a strong industry. And I think that realisation that we need all of the above is that's a real opportunity. Now that has fostered a lot of discussions. We are moving to implement some of that as a regulation. That's what the member states and the European Commission are doing. I think what we as stakeholders, we then need to move towards implementation. So what is the actions that we are taking? How do we take the developments that are happening in our projects and push them into daily practice? How do we embed real-world evidence in the normal practice as part of the European innovation ecosystem? How do we move forward with some of the discussions around changing of regulation and make sure that, I mean, what did it say on the sign, the 38,000 companies in medtech? That's an awful lot of people that we need to help to train to understand and help them to make use of these opportunities.

Davidson Leite

Especially if you consider the 90% of them are SMEs. So we're talking innovators, startups, and they really need the industry to do the heavy lifting, the bigger players, to rely on policymakers so we keep innovation thriving.

Niklas Blomberg

Exactly, and I think this is, and I'll come back to where I started. I think that's why it's really important that we think about where can we add value at the European level to all of those great national and regional initiatives that exist. Because in reality, we can only reach the whole sector by working together at the regional level, at the national level, and at the European level.

Davidson Leite

Yeah, collaboration, the word of the day.

Niklas Blomberg

Bold collaborations, transforming health.

Davidson Leite

Excellent, excellent. Thank you very much, Nikolas. It was great.

Niklas Blomberg

Great. OK.

Davidson Leite

That was Niklas Blomberg, Executive Director of IHI, and that idea of health innovation as a team sport really says it all. A strong industry and accessible, high-quality healthcare for Europeans are not in competition. They go hand in hand, and there is real momentum behind that right now. This episode is part of our live series from the Med Tech Forum 2026 in Stockholm.

Check out the other episodes too, I'm sure there's something for you. Links to learn more about IHI and MedTech Europe's work are in the comments and the podcast description. Thanks for listening to MedTech ON AIR. See you in the next one.