Criteria to define innovation in the field of medical devices: a Delphi approach

Defining innovation in the field of medical devices can be extremely challenging due to the peculiarity of the products within this class. Short life-cycle, incrementality, learning curve effect, impact of the organizational setting, uncertainty of effect and level of evidence are only some of these aspects. A clear set of criteria to define innovation would be of paramount relevance in this field. Twelve criteria to define innovation were proposed to a multistakeholder panel within a consensus process. A Delphi method on two rounds was used to reach consensus. In total, 53 of the 93 (47%) invited panelists responded to the first round of the survey. Among them, 51 (96%) completed also the second round. At the first round, consensus was reached for four of the 12 proposed criteria. Three of the remaining eight criteria reached consensus at the second round. It was not possible to reach consensus for the remaining five criteria. The criteria that collected the highest scores (close to 100%) were from the clinical impact domain, namely the ability of the technology to offer significant advantages over existing alternatives in terms of improving relevant clinical outcomes, and the ability to address an unmet need defined in terms of unavailability of diagnosis/treatment alternatives. High levels of consensus (about 80%) were registered on criteria belonging to non-clinical domains of analysis and, in particular, the ability of the technology to introduce organizational benefits, and the ability of the technology to bring cost reduction providing the same clinical benefit of current alternatives.