The future of technical documentation automation in the healthcare sector

At a time when the healthcare industry is increasingly shaped by digital innovations, meddevo is at the forefront. Its approach to automating technical documentation and regulatory affairs promises not only a more efficient way of working, but also a significant reduction in effort and bottlenecks. With meddevo, the creation and maintenance of documentation is taken to a whole new level by avoiding redundant processes and editing content at the content level. In this interview with Michael Kania, we take a look at the driving motivation behind the founding of meddevo, how they convince customers from the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare sector and where they see themselves in three years. In addition, you will learn how the collaboration with 5-HT supports meddevo's vision and what role Germany plays in this. Dive with us into the future of technical documentation in the healthcare sector.

How would you explain your solution in three sentences to a healthcare professional?

Automation of technical documentation and regulatory affairs. Well-trained staff do boring copy-and-paste work in hundreds of Word documents. meddevo remedies this by working at content level when creating and maintaining technical documentation, thus avoiding redundancies. Instead of changing a product feature in many files, you only change it once. The related documents and registrations update automatically.

What problem motivated you to found the company? 

I myself worked in the field of regulatory affairs for medical products for over 10 years and was frustrated at some point by the processes and the half-hearted digitalisation with Word and Sharepoint. 
From the beginning, our goal with meddevo was to automate, digitalise and accelerate as much as possible. On the one hand, so that the employees of the medical device manufacturers have more time again for the important tasks, and on the other hand, to reduce bottlenecks. 
If you want to learn more about this, it's best to listen to this podcast episode of MedTalk ON AIR.

How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, health insurer, insurance company or other potential client to set up a pilot project with you? 

When we have an idea for a new solution, we first seek out experts from the industry and talk to them to test our hypotheses. With the input from these conversations, we then approach our desired partners and simply ask if they would like to do a pilot project with us. Often we are preaching to the choir, especially our colleagues from the regulatory affairs department, because at the moment a large part of the medical devices in Europe are still certified according to MDD (study by Team NB) and of course many manufacturers are wondering how they can bring their technical documentation up to the MDR standard as quickly as possible.

Who are your current customers (groups) and who should be the potential customers? 

Our customers are very diverse - from small manufacturers where regulatory affairs is carried out by the management themselves, to medium-sized companies with their own small department, to large global companies that use meddevo in several languages for thousands of products. 
We try to keep our software flexible enough to meet the diverse requirements and special wishes of industry. So there is no one potential meddevo customer. If you manufacture medical products, meddevo will help you! The first customer from Japan is in sight. That is why we are participating in the German Accelerator Programme.

Where do you see yourselves in 3 years and how can 5-HT support you?

In three years, we will of course be the hit in Japan, and since we have integrated the Japanese Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act into our software, it will be much easier for European and Japanese manufacturers to establish their medical products in each other's markets. In addition, thanks to 5-HT, we are very well connected in the industry and owe you new customers, big and small - no pressure!