On January 31, 2020, the non-statutory HTA body, Swiss Medical Board, published the results of the report in which they compared the surgical and non-surgical treatment of rotator cuff tears. Though the surgery is more effective, the traditional treatment demonstrated better cost-benefit results. Thus, the Swiss Medical Board recommends the rotator cuff surgery with limitations.

We have released the interview on the Market Access Insider channel on Youtube. The interview covered the role and activities of patient advocacy groups in Italy, typical issues facing by the patient organizations, role of patient organizations in development of the LEA catalog in Italy, access to stoma care across Italian regions, the importance of setting up patient registries to facilitate access to medical technologies.

NICE published a draft Diagnostic guideline on the Reveal LINQ monitor. The monitor can be recommended for routine adoption under certain clinical criteria. The expected publication date of the final guideline is 27 May 2020.

The French High Authority for Health (HAS) regularly publishes new decisions about add-on reimbursement for medical devices. The decisions made in January 2020 concern various types of devices, mostly for cardiovascular and orthopaedic devices, and medial aids. A total of 29 decisions were made.

On the week of the 10th of February, MTRC published several posts related to the innovation funding schemes for medical devices in Europe, and the 2020 decisions for the innovation funding in Germany (NUB). Follow us on Instagram on @mtrc.market.access

The Italian association of medical technology manufacturers, CONFINDUSTRIA dispositivi medici, published the results of a study in which they studied the average time the supplier of medical devices has to wait to get an invoice paid by the Italian hospitals. The differences vary between 35 days and 504 days.

On February 1, 2020, an additional test was added to the newborn screening, performed 2-3 days after birth. Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is thus the 18th disease for which newborns are screened in Denmark.

At the end of January 2020, the entity managing the DRG system in Switzerland, SwissDRG, has published the data collection forms for SwissDRG 2020 (2019 data). Furthermore, an explanation about the coding of “Aortic stent graft (stent prosthesis)” has been released.

In January 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published only three new interventional procedure guidance (for reducing the risk of transmission of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) from surgical instruments used for interventional procedures on high-risk tissues, fetoscopic and open prenatal repair for open neural tube defects in the fetus).

On January 30, 2020, the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System (InEK) has published the List of the requests for innovation funding (NUB), submitted by the hospitals until October 31, 2019. Out of 778 technologies, 201 (26%) received the positive status 1, which means that the evaluated procedure or medical device meets the NUB criteria and allows the hospitals to negotiate with the sickness funds for the innovation funding for these technologies.

We have released the interview on the Market Access Insider channel on Youtube. The interview covered key stakeholders, procedure coding, functioning of the DRG system, reimbursement processes for medical technologies in Switzerland. Michel discussed the biggest mistakes made by the Med Tech companies on the market and advised on the best strategy on how to approach the market.

New material codes for a set of equipment for the quantification of collateral ventilation in isolated pulmonary compartments and unidirectional endobronchial valve with placement system were added to the List of reimbursable devices of the Belgian National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (INAMI-RIZIV) in February 2020.