Our Ignite: Experiences virtual event, Whatever it Takes, was a jam-packed day of thought leadership and peer discussions across the product content management space. We explored the perspectives of many verticals throughout the day, one of which was healthcare—specifically, the challenges medical device manufacturers face around UDI data submissions.

In case you missed the event, we’re recapping each session so you can still get the highlights, top takeaways from speakers, and key industry trends and insights. This blog will specifically cover the healthcare breakout session: Sharing Product Data: Moving from a Liability to an Asset to Drive Growth.

Read on for the recap.

A major theme discussed in this breakout session was the evolution of healthcare into digital spaces—and how UDI factors into it all. The growing emphasis on managing product data according to fast-changing regulatory requirements has become a more significant part of the digital shift in healthcare, which is what Syndigo’s Content Experience Hub (CXH) directly supports as the one product record for UDI submissions.

With various regulators posing unique requirements for how they’d like to receive UDI data, medical device manufacturers have to race to keep up with each. Moreover, the regulators pivot on what those requirements look like quite frequently, making the “race to keep up” even trickier for those manufacturers. As the industry goes more digital, manual data entry and back-and-forth edits regarding submissions is becoming a thing of the past. Syndigo’s CXH platform enables single submissions through a ‘single source of truth,’ meaning one place that has the up-to-date recipient requirements that can ingest and validate each data set for successful syndication.

Representatives from GE Healthcare and Merit Medical were panelists in this conversation, providing a closer look into the obstacles that medical device manufacturers face.

When asked about the most significant pain points within the industry today, Kelly Boyer, UDI Technical Product Manager for GE Healthcare attested to the difficulties of keeping up with regulatory requirements and master data management. Similarly, Ken Wayne, Sr. Quality Systems Engineer for Merit Medical highlighted the challenges of meeting different requirements for different recipients in a sustainable way. The discussion reinforced how top-of-mind these issues are and why they’re so common amongst healthcare manufacturers.

Regulations are coming so fast and furious.”

— Kelly Boyer, UDI Technical Product Manager for GE Healthcare

Both panelists spoke to the fact that having a comprehensive platform (CXH) to reduce manual entry and to seamlessly submit data—in the format recipients want—is crucial to operational success.

In particular, Boyer noted that using CXH as that golden product record has enabled better productivity for GE Healthcare’s UDI submissions, allowing one solution to be the source of truth for submitting products to all regulator recipients. Wayne spoke to the benefits of Merit Medical’s ongoing partnership with Syndigo, explaining how the integration has complemented Merit Medical’s business goals when it comes to UDI and how the collaboration has made it simple to align on data needs and processes.

Syndigo listens to the voice of the customer.”

— Ken Wayne, Sr. Quality Systems Engineer for Merit Medical

The panel addressed how UDI is just one element of the larger focus on healthcare product data. Both Boyer and Wayne expressed how working with CXH will continue to be critical as the digitization of the industry continues to grow.

In response to the final question of the session around “biggest fears” in healthcare device data management, Wayne referenced the worry of missing something—from a requirement to an update to a compliance element. He explained that knowing the “latest and greatest” about what’s coming from a regulatory standpoint is understandably tough and that having a partner in Syndigo to assist with researching such updates is essential.

“You definitely need an ally in the game. You definitely need somebody that is there to help in the digitization,” he said in his closing remarks.

Want Syndigo to be your ally? Learn more about how we partner with healthcare suppliers, distributors, GPOs, and others.