A Special Report
bring the kWh cost of solar power more in line with what utility companies offer.
Medical Manufacturing
The North American medical device industry has been growing at a healthy clip for years, but is facing more pressure to create high-quality products at lower costs than ever before. Healthcare reform and FDA stringency in the US, along with the need to compete for market share in the developing world, are the pincers squeezing medical device OEMs to find ways to retain quality, increase innovation, and reduce product cost all at the same time.
Clarkston Consulting (Durham, NC,) in their 2014 Medical
Device Trends Report, identifies healthcare provider consolida- tion, an aging developed-world population, emerging markets and increased regulation as four trends that are sculpting the medical device manufacturing industry. Regulations are, of course, what define the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the US government looks to have the success of US healthcare measured by its quality rather than quantity. The part of the ACA package that has gotten the most attention in 2013, however, is the Medical Device Tax, the 2.3% excise tax that came with the ACA and which kicked in last year and barely survived the US congressional budget battles at the end of the year. The tax was the source of much consternation this past year as its proponents and opponents debated its effects on the industry.
Since 2011, the industry trade group Advanced Medical
Technology Association (AdvaMed) has warned that the tax would stifle innovation and make manufacturers move offshore, resulting, they projected, in the disappearance of 43,000 US jobs. Bloomberg Government concluded that the 2011 AdvaMed study that came up with that job-loss figure is “not credible,” while others, such as Paul N. Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, argue that rather than stifle innovation, health reform—of which the tax is a part—may well spur medical device innovation by promoting more cost- effective ways of delivering care. We’ll need to wait a bit longer to see which side of the debate is proven correct, however.
Fractal Technology Trends In December 2013, Stryker Corp. (Kalamazoo, MI) com-
pleted its $1.65 billion acquisition of MAKO Surgical Corp. (Ft. Lauderdale, FL)—a pioneer in the robotic-assisted orthopedic
surgery field. The rise of robotics in device technology is mir- rored by its rise in the manufacturing of the devices them- selves, an example of what one could call a fractal technology: the method of building the devices can be seen as an aspect of the device itself.
Additive manufacturing, commonly referred to as 3D print- ing, is finding a niche in providing custom medical parts.
Other manufacturing technologies similarly reflected in trend- ing medical-device technology include micro and nanotechnol- ogy: Micro and nano-sized products are being developed while manufacturing techniques to create such products at a depend- able quality and cost are also under way.
Another burgeoning device trend, as reported in Frost
& Sullivan’s 2013 Global Medical Devices Outlook, is multi- functionality. “Due to price sensitivity and availability of floor space, highly-specialized pieces of equipment are losing out in purchase decision making to versatile systems capable of addressing multiple needs,” says HIT Consultant Media about medical devices—but they could just as easily be making the case for multitasking CNC machining equipment. Interoperability and increased use of “Big Data” are two more of the device trends cited by Frost & Sullivan that have parallels in manufacturing. We would add additive manufacturing to the list: it remains one of the most talked-about manufacturing technologies in the medical device field. It is not only used to make products, including custom products built for specific customers, but, in the form of 3D printers for use in medical labs and offices, is a product itself. ME
March 2014 |
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