MICHAEL BRANAGAN-HARRIS

Since 1989, Michael Branagan-Harris, CEO of Device Access UK Ltd has been involved in accelerating patient access to great technology in the UK’s health care system – the National Health Service or NHS.
During his role in sales, he introduced the Lap Band for obesity, endovascular grafts, novel endo laparoscopic surgery devices and the DaVinci robot.
From 2006-2009 Michael ran VNUS Medical UK Ltd, a subsidiary of VNUS Inc San Jose California. Where he introduced VNUS Closure®, a novel minimally invasive treatment alternative to painful vein stripping surgery. Following his team’s efforts, VNUS Closure was showcased by The NHS Innovation Centre, leading to accelerated adoption and diffusion across the NHS and VNUS Medical was subsequently purchased by Covidien for over $500M
Today VNUS Closure has fully replaced traditional vein stripping surgery as the procedure of choice, saving the NHS over 50,000 valuable bed days a year.
Ten years ago, Michael incorporated Device Access UK and since then his team has helped hundreds of Medical Device and Diagnostic companies navigate their way into the NHS. Their clients range from small start-up to multinational from across the world.
In 2014, Device Access was granted a commercial licence from NHS Digital to access over 1 Billion NHS England patient electronic health records. This data allows them to examine diagnosis, procedure and spend data, nationally and by each NHS Hospital in England, and in turn enables Device Access to see how their client’s technology could affect the current patient pathway, assist in building a value story with NICE and a solid business case for local and national NHS Hospital adoption.
In 2018 Device Access relocated to the University of Southampton Science Park, and today the team consists of specialists in NHS Change Management and dossier writing, real World Data Analytics, Health Economics and Outcomes research, fats track publication of economic evidence, and supporting clients for NICE HTA approvals. This work also involves close collaboration with the National Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI), the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the UK’s Department of international Trade (DIT)
To date, Device Access has helped over 40 companies navigate various NICE evaluation programmes for approval. More recently in March 2019 Device Access became part of the IGES Group of companies – www.iges.com