Achievements

• Producing a foundational set of 9 working papers in three critical fields: economic assessment, business processes, and user needs.
• Identifying the main new medical product development processes (Deliverables D5 & D9).
• Identifying a spectrum of methods to engage with users, and performing an early analysis of uptake and adoption (Deliverables D6, D10 & D19).
• Undertaking value-related research (Deliverable D4), for instance, on hip and knee replacement.
• Surveying and providing overviews of critical areas such as regulatory environments and trials methodologies (Deliverables D2, D3, & D11).
• Promotion to industry through trade journals (e.g. Backing a Winner, Health Equipment & Supplies, 2004) and events (e.g. each MDT conference/exhibition in the past three years).
• Signing up more than 20 industrial partners.
• Running MATCH events, especially for SMEs. An example is the various Medilink events.
• Applied research, from multi-disciplinary teams, against very practical requirements. An example would be the economic evaluation of a diagnostic for heart failure (see Project 1).
• Engagement with stakeholders, such as ABHI (Association of British Healthcare Industries), HITF (Health Industries Task Force), the DoH's R&D, PaSA, NICE, MHRA, Invest NI and the NPSA (National Patient Safety Agency).
• Building a team of ~30 people (including 14 full-time research, 4 support staff, 3 managerial staff) from 10 departments at 4 universities through joint research, team and personal development.
• Undertaking genuinely cross-site, cross-disciplinary research on a significant scale, and running effective management, decision-making, financial and administrative processes.
• Many projects are underway on 'real' industry problems such as reimbursement systems, cost-effectiveness modelling, and capture and recording of the user perspective.

Impact on the Industry

• MATCH has already attracted £1.9M of additional support and commitment, this is a major achievement and evidence of significant interest.
• MATCH has averaged more than one engagement per week with an industrial or public sector organisation.
• Public sector engagement, initiated from the Public Interest Forum, has resulted in a specific project to seek a means of integrating MATCH-type methods with supply-chain developments to improve NHS procurement.
• The research undertaken collaboratively with industrial Research partners has made a wider contribution, and has contributed to a series of developments, pressures and achievements that have supported their migration towards better evidence-based promotion of their products. Companies are increasingly recognising that this type of modelling will have to inform their submissions to reimbursement agencies.
• Informal evaluation of the tools emerging from MATCH with, for instance, the ABHI, indicate enormous potential. The challenge is to embed them in company practice.