From the editor


When medtech scales up


On the web...


Find the latest features, market analysis and supplier information at www.medicaldevice-developments.com


Medical Device Developments Vol. 2 2026


Editorial


Editor-in-chief Thom Atkinson thom.atkinson@btmi.com


Contributors Jim Banks, Liam Critchley, Sarah Harris, Monica Karpinski, Ross Law, Catherine Longworth, Patrick McGuire, Abi Millar, Ellie Philpotts, Sachin Rawat, Claire Read


Chief sub-editor Katie Smith Wong Sub-editor Julian Turner Designer Martin Faulkner Art director Henrik Williams Production Dave Stanford


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Publication manager Danielle Driver danielle.driver@btmi.com


Division sales manager Martin John martin.john@btmi.com


Medical Device Developments is published by Business Trade Media International, a division of GlobalData. Registered in England No. 06212740. ISSN 1747-9610 © 2026


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en units a week can become 10,000 a day. That jump, cited by Dr Alghazali of the New York Institute of Technology in one of our features, gets to the heart of several stories in this issue. A prototype may work. The harder job is building the manufacturing, supplier, packaging and regulatory systems around it so that it can work at commercial scale. Alghazali calls the gap between academia and industry a “black hole”. Once production rises, teams must reproduce the same device consistently while accounting for packaging, labelling and regulatory requirements that may have received less attention during development.


Who makes those units becomes part of the same problem. Medtech OEMs are weighing multiple contract manufacturing relationships against placing more work with full-service providers. Covid-19 disruption helped push supplier fragmentation up the agenda, while trade pressures, geopolitical uncertainty and rising device complexity continue to influence those decisions. Consolidation may bring advantages in cost, speed and coordination, but it still has to fit the product and the OEM’s aims. The choice affects responsibility, resilience and how quickly a company can respond when something goes wrong.


As production networks spread across manufacturers, distributors and third-party logistics providers, visibility becomes harder to manage. RFID- enabled packaging can show how much inventory is sitting with a third-party logistics provider, support recalls across dispersed product populations and help prevent devices being used in markets where they are not approved. Labels, barcodes and machine-readable identifiers also carry much of the regulatory compliance burden. Packaging, in that sense, is becoming one of the places where supply chain control and regulation meet. The connections are practical. Scale changes manufacturing. Manufacturing choices shape the supplier network. More movement creates more to track, while regulation puts a premium on knowing where products and components are.


A clever device is only the beginning. The real test is whether the system around it can keep up.


Thom Atkinson, editor-in-chief


www.medicaldevice-developments.com


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