As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of AdvaMed, the Medtech Association, we recognize the critical role the medtech industry has played – and always will play – in transforming people’s lives. As the current Administration launches it’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, it’s important that we remember that the medtech industry has been making America healthy again since its inception. The story of medtech is the most powerful story in health care and it really is a story as old as toolmaking itself. It is the story of getting people back to good health. Back to “normal.” Back to playing with their grandchildren. Back to moving, walking, and even seeing again. Back to life.
But in just the last 50 years, our industry has made tremendous strides that have changed, extended, and saved countless lives. Medtech is the backbone of our health care system—the engine that drives hospitals.
Which is why 50 years ago, AdvaMed was founded with the mission of creating a policy environment that would help the companies driving these remarkable innovations in patient care succeed. How far have we come in just half a century?
Think about it this way: When AdvaMed first opened its doors, CT scans had only been around for two years. The first insulin pump was less than a year old. There was no such thing as an MRI. What’s more, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had not even been created, and the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health was only a year old.
Since then, our industry has had a transformational impact, shepherding in a new era of innovation on behalf of patients everywhere:
- Diabetes. We have gone from yesterday’s life-threatening guessing game for Type 1 diabetes patients and their families to treatment with machine-learning precision through today’s continuous glucose monitors.
- Pacemakers. We have turned life-ending heart conditions into minor outpatient procedures, through the dramatic evolution of pacemakers from the size of a car battery to leadless and not much larger than a nickel, inserted almost effortlessly through an artery in your leg.
- Craniotomies. We have moved from invasive craniotomies that removed the skull and lifted the brain to surgically tie off an aneurysm to inserting a coil directly into the aneurysm that ties it off itself—all of it through the leg artery without having to touch even a hair on the patient’s head.
- ECGs. We’re moving from ECGs administered in a hospital, gathering data over a short period of time, to a small patch that continuously monitors the heart for days at a time so patients can live their lives to the fullest.
But we won’t stop there. The renaissance in medical innovation is just getting started.
Medtech companies are accelerating the rate of progress. They’re finding new ways to provide more accurate and timely diagnoses and treat conditions faster and less invasively than ever before.
AdvaMed is proud to help foster this new era.
We secured the landmark passage of the fifth Medical Device User Fee Agreement (MDUFA V) in 2022, delivering critical new resources to ensure the industry and the FDA can better serve patients everywhere. Most recently, our fierce advocacy on behalf of the industry is building the strongest momentum yet toward the enactment of Medicare coverage for FDA-designated and -cleared breakthrough medtech, which would bring relief to unmet medical needs for millions of patients.
We have unified the industry and found new ways to advocate for our membership.
In just the past two years, we created a new Medical Imaging division as well as a Digital Health Tech division, cementing AdvaMed’s position as the leading global trade group for the entire industry.
As we reflect on the last 50 years and look ahead to the next 50, medtech’s legacy is not only about its technologies.
It’s about the billions of people whose lives have been, are being, and will be transformed, extended, and saved by those technologies. Behind each treatment, device, and condition is a son, daughter, mother, a father—each far too young to say goodbye. Medtech is changing that. Medtech is saving lives.
To learn more about the history of medtech, view a 50-year Timeline of Medtech Milestones here.
Author: Scott Whitaker, President & CEO, AdvaMed
Source: https://www.advamed.org/2025/07/29/50-years-of-medtech/