{"id":9004111222143658,"date":"2026-04-28T08:39:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T07:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hgf.com\/?p=9004111222143658"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:44:26","slug":"the-secrets-of-medtech-and-digital-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hgf.com\/fr\/knowledge-hub\/articles\/the-secrets-of-medtech-and-digital-health\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secrets of MedTech and Digital Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protecting hidden value in an era of connected care and intelligent devices<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n

With the explosion of AI and machine learning in the MedTech and Digital Health sectors, trade secrets are becoming an increasingly valuable tool to complement patents in protecting companies\u2019 intellectual property (\u201cIP\u201d). While patents remain central to protecting core technological innovations, trade secrets offer distinct and different advantages that make them particularly well suited for protecting certain types of MedTech and Digital Health assets.<\/em><\/p>\n

Although patents are considered the gold standard for IP protection, not all commercially valuable elements are eligible for patent protection. In many cases, there is significant commercial value residing in the industrial knowledge and fine-tuned parameters surrounding the core inventions which allow them to perform at a high level. This knowledge, often developed through extensive testing and development, is often ineligible or unsuitable for patent protection, not least because it would be made public upon publication of the patent application and the power of that knowledge lies in the secrecy of it. Once patent protection has been ruled out as a mechanism for protecting this knowledge, often no further thought is given to protecting this valuable IP, leaving it potentially unprotected. This is where trade secrets come in.<\/p>\n

Trade secrets are often an underutilised type of IP protection which, unlike patents, are not published and can last indefinitely provided confidentiality and protection measures are maintained. Although trade secrets can be more difficult to enforce than patents, they provide a complementary route for protecting IP which might otherwise be challenging to protect. For example, MedTech and Digital Health companies may derive substantial advantage from:<\/p>\n