COVID-19
We thank our member companies for their continued efforts to mobilize for health care workers on the frontlines.
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COVID-19 Member Resource Center
With our member companies on the frontlines of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, AdvaMed is working diligently to address the medtech industry’s needs and provide resources that support you and your businesses during this challenging time.
AdvaMed Members Fight Coronavirus
At the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, AdvaMed member companies donated millions of dollars’ worth of medical products and cash to hospitals, foundations and charities around the world. Medical device companies responded to increased demand by ramping up production wherever possible, coordinating closely with governments to ensure the delivery of supplies where they were most needed, and in some cases, creating new devices and diagnostic tests to help effectively diagnose and treat sick patients.
AdvaMedDx and COVID-19 Testing
In the fight against COVID-19, diagnostic and serology (antibody) tests, along with other tests essential to patient management for those hospitalized with COVID-19, are front-line tools supporting patient care and public health.
Over the course of the last two years, AdvaMedDx members have dramatically mobilized in an unprecedented effort to develop and manufacture hundreds of millions of molecular, antigen and serology/antibody tests for COVID-19. Companies have also increased manufacturing of laboratory and point-of-care instrumentation to support test expansion. Significant supplies of these quality COVID-19 laboratory and point-of-care tests – instrumented and instrumentless, are available and member companies have augmented manufacturing to continue to adeptly support our collective response and recovery. Testing will continue to be a necessary and integral part of our ongoing response to COVID-19.
To expand testing to all, AdvaMedDx and its members have collectively advocated on a wide range of policies, including flexibility in sample collection and where tests can be run; funding to extend testing infrastructure; coverage policies aligned with the intentions of the CARES Act; and ensuring the utility of tests for screening is well-understood. AdvaMedDx continues to work with the Biden Administration and other partners to extend the reach of testing by encouraging the use of all types of COVID-19 tests across all modalities.
Early in the pandemic, to support government pandemic response effort AdvaMedDx launched a COVID-19 Testing Supply Registry. The Registry provides real-time, actionable data on COVID-19 testing supplies shipped to laboratories nationwide. The Registry includes participation from thirteen leading diagnostics manufacturers whose tests together comprise ~80% of the COVID-19 molecular tests on the market in the U.S.
Medtech’s Role in Combatting COVID-19
The medical technology industry recognizes its crucial role in our nation’s health care system, particularly during an unprecedented public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This crisis has united us all as Americans in a global fight. The patients our industry serves have always been our No. 1 priority, and we are working around the clock to meet their needs. We are committed as medical technology innovators and manufacturers to working with federal, state, and local authorities to ensure our nation’s disaster planning efforts are coordinated, efficient, and effective. The medtech industry has mobilized to this global cause, and we are committed to the following guiding principles in our efforts to conquer the coronavirus.
- We will continue to increase manufacturing capacity and support policies and industry initiatives to ensure patients have access to critical medical technologies, partnering with manufacturers inside and outside our industry.
- We will continue to support our employees and their families in staying healthy so they can continue to pursue their mission of serving patients and keeping the health care system strong.
- We will work with the administration to provide timely product availability information to health care institutions and the public, partnering with GPOs, distributors, and hospitals.
- We will leverage our industry’s substantial investments in diagnostics to continue deploying tests, support our nation’s laboratory infrastructure, and develop point-of-care tests to make rapid testing widely available to patients.
- We will continue our work with government agencies, health care providers, and payers to expand patient access to medical technologies, including telemedicine, and to assist with remote training among medical professionals.
Guidance for Health Care Industry Representatives
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and surgical facilities nationwide paused elective surgical procedures and other nonemergent and nonessential services, limiting physical access to facilities for nonessential health care personnel, patient visitors, and medical device representatives. AdvaMed collaborated with the American Hospital Association and the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses to provide these clinically based recommendations to support health care organizations and medical device representatives when resuming elective procedures. The following principles and considerations are intended to guide facilities, health care personnel and medical device representatives as they adopt access policies that support safe reentry of medical device representatives into the facility.
COVID-19 Medtech Resource Center
With our member companies on the frontlines of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, AdvaMed is working diligently to address the medtech industry’s needs and provide resources that support you and your businesses during this challenging time.