Ovik Mkrtchyan on Why Innovation Is Ultimately Tested in Practice

Societies have long placed great value on innovations and technological breakthroughs, particularly in the healthcare and medical sectors, where millions of lives are potentially at stake. At the same time, for entrepreneurs and innovators, such as Ovik Mkrtchyan, innovation is ultimately judged by how it performs in everyday use.

In 2025, the pace of innovation across industries was extraordinarily rapid, and the scope of what’s possible continues to expand with each passing year. From digital transformation to data-led restructuring, and from engineering breakthroughs to AI revolutions, change is all around us, and endless evolution is perhaps now one of the few constants we can take for granted.

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But while new frontiers are so consistently coming into view for enterprises and research teams everywhere, the true value of innovation can only be fully explored when combined with smart, practical, targeted deployment. And in the context of medicine and healthcare, it’s at the cutting edge where hugely impactful gains can be made and where a great many lives can potentially be saved.

The impact of AI

There are lots of ways in which AI is already having a positive impact on healthcare provision globally. The technology is making its presence felt in lots of other industries too, but within medical contexts, it is enabling enhanced diagnostics, delivering operational efficiencies, and helping to personalise treatment plans as never before.

As with other innovative technologies though, AI can only ever be a tool with which relevant experts and practitioners are equipped. The associated solutions can augment and enhance the work being done by professionals but their effectiveness will still depend on proper deployment and a critical mass of relevant people learning the right lessons along the way.

Digitalisation and data-led developments

Medical facilities are also being transformed through digitalisation in many important ways. In a growing number of countries, the smart use of apps and digital platforms is advancing the way hospitals work and how once disparate care services are becoming better integrated, both in terms of their internal structures and from a data perspective.

What’s certain is that there is enormous scope for dramatic, life-saving improvements to be made in all these contexts. The World Health Organisation (WHO), for example, reported in May 2025 that somewhere between 5.7 and 8.4 million deaths annually are attributable to poor quality healthcare provision in low and middle-income countries around the world.

Those figures represent roughly 15 per cent of all deaths in those countries per year, according to the WHO, which has explained that very often people in many parts of the world simply do not trust their local healthcare systems or service providers.

Science supporting safety

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are among the pre-eminent health risks at most modern medical facilities worldwide. Indeed, those infections are held responsible for millions of excess deaths annually on a global basis, including tens of thousands in the US and in countries across Europe.

Sometimes the most fundamental challenges are the most stubbornly difficult for societies and scientists to overcome, as is the case with what might seem, at first glance, like a simple matter – keeping surgical tools and medical facilities completely free of infection. In practice, throughout the world, even as treatment methods and diagnostic capabilities have advanced at astonishing rates, keeping medical kits free from contamination has remained a persistent challenge.

According to experts working in this field, progress depends less on isolated breakthroughs and more on how reliably prevention measures are applied in real-world clinical settings.

Controlling environments

Ovik Mkrtchyan is the founder of New Medical Technologies, which operates at the intersection of medical innovation and applied infection control. Its research-led operation focuses on developing practical sterilisation and virus inactivation solutions that can be integrated into everyday clinical routines. The company has a track record in virus inactivation technologies, with patented sterilisation units forming part of this broader approach.

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“The effectiveness of prevention tools is determined by how naturally they fit into real workflows,” Ovik Mkrtchyan explains. “When safety measures are intuitive and reliable, they stop being an additional burden and become part of standard practice.”

The practicalities of progress

Innovations and discoveries do so much to drive societies forward and to redefine what’s possible from generation to generation. But making things better in the wake of breakthroughs and advancements represents a different kind of challenge. In the realms of medical technologies, combining pioneering progress with practical use cases has long been essential to success, and that fundamental reality looks certain to endure.

Ovik Mkrtchyan notes that there is every reason to be excited about many of the discoveries currently being made and the new technologies being advanced worldwide. However, he warns that without the right focus on the deployment side of the equation, opportunities to land positive impacts could be lost amid the noise and pull of innovations that seem more spectacular but are ultimately less significant than they initially appear.

“It is all about problem solving, in the end,” says Ovik Mkrtchyan. “As scientists and innovators, we’re all aiming for the same thing, fundamentally, but it takes collaboration and collective commitment for us all to make the most of what new discoveries and breakthroughs can bring to the world and to the people who might benefit the most.”