AI: MedTech

With rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we are seeing the emergence of AI-based technologies in the MedTech sector, which promise significant benefits in terms of patient care and treatment outcomes. A major advantage of AI algorithms is their ability to leverage traits they have learned from large volumes of patient data, enabling them to greatly enhance medical practitioners’ capabilities in a variety of ways.

Examples of where AI is used in the MedTech space include:

  • AI-controlled or AI assisted devices and systems - such as robot-assisted surgical systems, AI-controlled radiotherapy, AI-controlled imaging systems, medical robots/assistants.
  • AI-based analysis of medical images - such as real-time analysis of radiography images or surgical images.
  • AI-based health monitoring and diagnostics - such as analysis of output data from sensors and/or wearables, health recommendations based on sensor outputs.
  • Use of AI to assist in designing medical devices - such as designing implants or prosthetics with an AI tool.

From a patents perspective, this is a highly specialised area of the law, as it involves the interplay between rules around the patenting software inventions on the one hand, and the patenting of medical techniques on the other. As an IP firm with experts working in both MedTech and AI, we are ideally placed to help MedTech companies navigate the IP landscape and devise effective and commercially-focused IP strategies.

Our team

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Daniel Brodsky, Partner

Daniel is a UK and European patent attorney working in the fields of engineering, electronics, and software. He has extensive experience in drafting and prosecuting UK, European and International (PCT) patent applications, and handles patent prosecution in a variety of jurisdictions such as the US, Japan and China. Daniel has a great track record of getting tricky applications granted and works with his clients to build robust patent portfolios around their technologies.

Daniel also regularly undertakes freedom-to-operate (FTO) and patent-landscaping projects, providing strategic and commercially-minded advice to help clients navigate third party IP. Building on his FTO work, he help clients to challenge identified patents to clear the way for their products, e.g. by filing third party observations and/or oppositions at the EPO.

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Tom Furnival, Partner

Tom has a particular interest in transport and logistics, AI hardware as well as health/bioinformatics. He has a wealth of hands-on experience in the AI space, having worked with companies across the technical spectrum in areas such as multi modal threat detection, neurological assessments, and video analysis.

Tom works with inventors during the invention capture process to ensure that the resulting patent application is robust and suitable across jurisdictions. He also regularly assists foreign attorneys to obtain European protection for AI inventions. 

Emma Graham circle

Emma Graham, Partner

Emma focuses on AI as applied to e commerce, educational tools, digital health, internet of things, as well as optics/photonics. She recognises the fast moving nature of software and the need to obtain protection quickly. She takes a proactive approach in prosecution including arranging examiner interviews and regularly advises upon acceleration mechanisms, both locally in the UK and Europe as well as across global portfolios. Emma has a particular focus on drafting applications designed to achieve the best protection possible in both Europe and the US; a skill that often requires just the right amount of compromise. In 2014 she spent time on secondment working in Silicon Valley, giving her a unique perspective of the challenges that US applicants face when patenting in Europe.

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Richard Johnson, Partner

Richard has in-depth experience of navigating the IP challenges of incorporate AI innovations across a variety of sectors, including healthcare, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. He has over 20 years’ experience in building valuable IP portfolios for his clients. One of his notable achievements includes his work with Realeyes, a leader in AI-driven emotion analytics. Richard plays a key role in securing patents for Realeyes' innovative data handling technology that underpins their use of AI to analyse facial expressions and measure human behaviour. Richard has a particular interest in the ethics and policy around the intersection of AI and intellectual property, and has published a number of articles around that topic.

James Leach - Author

James Leach, Partner

James takes a special interest in AI as applied to web tools, digital security and medical devices. He has over 15 years’ experience in drafting and prosecuting patent applications in software/AI. James has particular practical and legal expertise in securing patent protection for software/AI inventions lying close to the boundary of patent eligibility, including use of machine learning for cyber security. More broadly, James has deep expertise in advising clients on invention capture and IP strategy. He is also astute at seamlessly managing teams of attorneys within Mewburn to ensure his clients get access to patent attorneys with the technical skills they need, no matter what the size of their patent portfolio. James enjoys working with clients who have the same passion he has for technology which improves peoples’ lives.

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Camille Terfve, Partner

Camille has particular expertise in data driven approaches in pharma, biotech and healthcare. She has a wealth of experience dealing with the use of AI for medical and biological data analysis, from protein language models to multimodal learning on health data. She advises clients of all size on patentability, IP strategy, opposition, drafting and prosecution in this specific field, often acting as the resident expert on the topic for her larger clients. Having been working in this field for 10+ years, she has deep experience of EPO practice in this regard, and a network of trusted attorneys worldwide who can handle this work. She is passionate about maths and data, and her alternate reality self would work as an AI researcher for one of her clients. 

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Alex Burns, IP Director

Alex focuses on inventions relating to artificial intelligence and machine-learning, as well as other technologies having a strong mathematical focus, such as cybersecurity and cryptography. His experience includes both drafting patent applications for AI technologies, and prosecuting AI patent applications in the UK, Europe, and internationally. Alex has handled patent applications for bioinformatics, medical image processing, cheminformatics, and pharmacokinetics as well as inventions relating to core AI, such as methods of training machine-learning algorithms, functioning of individual neurons in an artificial neural network, and explainable AI. Alex also has experience drafting patent applications relating to the application of generative AI in healthcare. Alex has completed a Machine Learning Specialization course with Stanford University. 

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Callum Anderson, Associate

Callum has experience in the drafting and prosecution of patent applications in the UK and at the EPO. He has worked with a range of subject matters including medical devices, mechanical engineering, software and consumer products.

Callum has a degree in Physics from Imperial College London and was awarded Associateship of the Royal College of Science. He qualified as a Chartered Patent Attorney in 2021 whilst working at another firm. He joined Mewburn Ellis in 2022 and also qualified as a European Patent Attorney in 2022.

Charlotte Lynch circle

Charlotte Lynch, Associate

Charlotte is a patent attorney working as part of our engineering and ICT team. She is experienced in working at all stages of the patent application process and has been involved in broader commercial strategy projects (involving analysing competitor patent activity, for example).

Charlotte has a keen interest in medical technologies, especially those in the “FemTech” sector which are designed to support women’s health. She has particular experience arguing in favour of the patentability of computer-implemented inventions at the European patent office, including those directed towards artificial intelligence (AI) and its application to fields such as bioinformatics and digital health.

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Alex Savin, Associate

Alex has a particular expertise in the application of AI to simulation and imaging, especially in the nuclear, medical and space-tech sectors.

Alex has experience working across all stages of the patent life cycle on inventions leveraging the power of AI, from invention capture and drafting, through prosecution, to opposition proceedings at the EPO. He is experienced in helping start-up companies and SMEs build and manage their patent portfolios.

Alex also drafts and prosecutes applications in the bioinformatics space, and in the field of AI-based generative design – e.g. for the purpose of electronics design.

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Joe Egelstaff, Patent Technical Assistant

Joe is a trainee patent attorney with a strong focus on medical devices and AI-driven MedTech. With an MEng in Mechanical Engineering, he supports clients developing innovative technologies such as surgical tools, diagnostic devices, and machine learning applications in healthcare. Joe assists in drafting and prosecuting patent applications across the UK, Europe, and internationally.

Joe won the IMechE Frederic Barnes Waldron prize for best mechanical engineering student upon graduating. He was part of the team which launched Team Bath Heart, a student-run competition team, aimed at designing a total artificial heart from scratch. He joined Mewburn Ellis in 2023.

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Emily Lloyd, Patent Technical Assistant

Emily has a particular expertise in the application of AI to knowledge graphs, IoT, CAD/CAM and e-commerce. Before joining Mewburn Ellis, Emily worked as a software engineer at a CAD/CAM software company, an e-commerce company and a research institute and has experience working with a variety of programming languages. In her work at an e-commerce company, she developed applications that integrate internally developed machine learning models, including computer vision and computer audition models, to optimise pricing and operations. 

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Kara Quast, Patent Technical Assistant

Kara graduated from the University of Stirling with a Bachelor’s degree in Computing Science with Honours. For her dissertation project she developed an interface between an AGV fleet planning algorithm and a warehouse navigation system to reduce the computational load of path planning. This project achieved distinction and Kara was presented with the award for best final year student. She worked as a software developer for a Berlin-based start-up providing AI-based software solutions for robotics. Kara’s particular research interests lie in Machine Learning for surgical robotics.

How AI is shaping the future of MedTech

Special Report

Led by Daniel Brodsky, this report looks into the challenges that arise while patenting MedTech innovations, in particular, uses for AI in the industry such as AI assisted devices and image analysis, the approaches taken by different national patent offices while protecting the MedTech sector and the increase in challenges that small applicants can face during this process compared to others.

This report highlights that the AI in MedTech space is a relatively young sector that is currently undergoing a period of rapid growth as new technologies continue to emerge.

Medtech wearble on wrist

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