

Michael Branagan-Harris now CEO of Device Access UK, has over 23 years experience in bringing many medical devices to market.
"It started in 1989 when I left the Royal Air Force Medical Services and got on the road with Beiersdorf Medical selling dressings and anti embolism stockings.
Over the years I moved onto more exciting technologies and was involved with bringing devices shown in the image to the NHS with some exciting but disruptive technologies.
In 2006 after spending a year in Australia with Applied Medical, I established the UK subsidiary of VNUS Medical Technologies Inc (Nasdaq VNUS) a Vascular Company.

With a small sales team and working closely with the NHS National Innovation Centre, I was able to quickly remove barriers for the NHS adoption of a new minimally invasive treatment for varicose veins, a procedure called VNUS Closure®
The UK team worked hard to increase adoption of this new technology combined with National patient awareness programme from BBC news stories together with an airline advertising campaign.
The old technique for vein stripping had been around for over 100 years and we had a mountain to climb, whilst the UK team were out on the road convincing the Surgeons to change, I worked to resolve the barriers for adoption.
One essential lesson learned was the importance of understanding the HRG and OPCS coding for the procedure and then turning this into a selling tool - thus enabling the team to have a much higher level of negotiation with NHS stakeholders - business and finance managers. We fully supported the Surgeons who often were unaware of tariffs and coding.
VNUS Medical Technologies UK became the fastest growing subsidiary of VNUS Medical in the world"

VNUS UK Sales team, Venous Forum Meeting
London April 2009.
One of the highlights of my time Managing VNUS Medical was getting VNUS Closure recognised as an innovation by the NHS National Innovation Centre. The statement from Brian Winn was used to further drive adoption, and in April 2009 VNUS Medical's VNUS Closure system was showcased at the NHS Innovation Expo in London
To find out more and view showcase video click on
http://showcase.nic.nhs.uk/ShowcaseDetails.aspx?id=1

