The crowd, the cloud and improving the future of medical device innovation

Barriers and delays to medical device innovation are often solely attributable to the regulatory environment instead of both the current state of innovation practices and product development processes in the industry. Increasing the pace of innovation while reducing costs requires the creation of a new approach that fits both established medical device corporations as well as entrepreneurial start-ups. In this commentary we advance the concept of innovation platforms to facilitate ideation in the medical device space. Such platforms could also allow the full health benefits from individual medical devices to be reaped, by overcoming interoperability concerns through simulation and credentialing. Given the dramatic benefits of medical device success, such non-traditional business models for development may be potential solutions for industry, users and regulators.