This paper focuses on the relatively recent recognition that the health-care sector can be an important source of innovation, business development and economic growth. In the wake of this discursive turn in policy, local and national innovation systems and soft infrastructure have developed to support the establishment and growth of knowledge-intensive firms that support the healthcare sector, such as medical technology. This paper examines how policydriven support systems for medical technology firms have developed. In the case of medical technology, this support infrastructure should be analysed relative to its fundamental features of being knowledge intensive, needing to innovate in short business cycles, being highly specialized and having its market in a strictly regulated sector—that is, the health-care sector.