By Yaqi Xie, co-founder, Neurotact
Why developing novel medtech extends beyond the technology itself
When we talk about progress in medtech, we often think of visible milestones: securing funding, beginning clinical studies, obtaining regulatory approval or reaching the market.
These are important achievements, but they capture only part of what it takes to bring genuinely novel technologies into healthcare.
This is particularly true for innovations that change the way care is delivered, rather than simply improving existing solutions.
Much of the work that makes these milestones possible happens much earlier, through building the evidence, confidence and understanding that allow genuinely novel technologies to be adopted.
Preparing a grant application for clinical validation gradually broadened my understanding of what developing a medtech innovation really means.
As a medtech founder with a background in design engineering, my instinct was to focus on the technology itself: improving performance, refining the design and demonstrating feasibility.
Those conversations remained essential, but they gradually expanded to include different questions.
How strong was the scientific evidence? Where would the technology fit within existing clinical pathways? What value would it create for patients, clinicians and healthcare providers?
And perhaps most importantly, how could it realistically be implemented in practice?
What struck me was that none of these discussions felt like distractions from innovation. They reflected the difference between developing a technology that works in the laboratory and one that can succeed in healthcare.
Clinicians wanted confidence that the technology solved a meaningful clinical problem. Funders wanted evidence that it could deliver real-world impact.
Increasingly, I realised that these questions were not simply about evaluating the technology; they were about understanding whether healthcare itself was ready to adopt it.
This is particularly true for genuinely novel medtech.
Technologies that build on existing clinical practice often need to demonstrate that they perform better than current solutions. But when a technology introduces a new way of diagnosing, monitoring or treating patients, technical performance alone is rarely enough.
Clinicians need confidence in how it fits into practice. Healthcare providers need evidence that it can be implemented effectively and deliver meaningful value.
Development therefore extends beyond the technology itself to include everything needed for that innovation to become part of routine care.
Over time, it became clear that the technology was no longer the only thing being developed. Alongside the device, the evidence supporting it matured.
Clinical understanding deepened. Plans for implementation, adoption, and value generation became clearer. Development gradually expanded beyond improving the product itself to building everything needed for that product to become part of healthcare.
Technical decisions were no longer driven solely by what was scientifically possible, but increasingly by what was clinically meaningful and practically deliverable. Evidence began to influence design choices.
Feedback from clinicians shaped future iterations. Considerations around implementation and adoption became part of the engineering process rather than something left until the end.
Seen in this way, validation was not separate from innovation; it helped shape its development.
Seen from this perspective, progress can look surprisingly different.
A prototype may appear unchanged. A clinical study may not yet have begun. Regulatory approval may still be years away.
Yet meaningful progress may already have been made because uncertainty has been reduced, confidence has grown, the evidence has become stronger, and the pathway towards adoption has become clearer.
By the time we reach the milestones we celebrate, much of the work that made them possible has already been done.
Funding, clinical trials and regulatory approvals all matter; they remain essential milestones. The more interesting question is what they actually measure. They tell us that progress has reached an important point, but not necessarily how that progress was achieved.
If much of the work that enables successful medtech innovation happens long before these milestones are reached, are they truly measures of progress, or simply the moments when that progress finally becomes visible?
