Contract Manufactures and Evolving Medtech Needs

According to QMED, besides regulatory complexity and the challenges of handling large companies, healthcare firms' profit margins are falling leading medtech companies to rely more heavily on contract manufacturers – which, in these days, quickly turns into contract development: from early product design to the manufacture of finished products.  

Source: QMED

Since companies are looking for assistance with product development, working with contract firms often signifies cost savings in the long run. “Decisions made early in the design cycle typically end up driving a majority of a finished product’s ultimate cost”. “The earlier you can look at a design, the earlier you can optimize it for manufacturing,” says Tim Hopper, CMO at EG-GILERO.

Such partnerships, between a design and a manufacturing company, bring together the theoretical and practical, according to Betten. “The merger gives the organization the ability to go from A to Z,” Betten said Wednesday at MD&M Philadelphia.

Makers Transforming the Medtech World

One of the changes we have been seen in the medical device sector is the so-called Maker Movement, which transforms product development approach we have today and turns people with no experience in the area into “healthcare technology tinkerers.”

One of the most notorious cases in the Robohand, a prosthetic hand developed by the Australian woodworker Richard van As, who lost four fingers in an accident in 2011. Together with the American-based special effects designer Ivan Owen, they developed a more affordable Robohand using a MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop 3-D printer.

Qmed

The creators uploaded the design into Thingiverse.com, enabling anyone in the world with Internet to access plans for the device. Anyone can also modify the design or use it as a starting point for a new one. Another recent and similar example was the Brazilian case that we wrote about previously in our blog.

“There are now hundreds of different prosthetics available on Thingiverse for free to download for anyone,” says Johan-TillBroer, PR manager at Makerbot. The website shows it has helped distribute at least one 3-D printed hand in 40 different countries.