Field Reports
Simulation Imitates Life
Battelle collaborates with OhioHealth's CME+I on conducting patient simulation testing. With more scrutiny from FDA and more hospital restrictions, how can device manufacturers--especially early-stage companies--get their product to market successfully? One method that is...
Forwarding my medical education thanks to Micro
  Little by little, I’m learning about the medical device industry. With my EE background, I’m finding that it’s not as hard as I expected to pick up the terminology. While I don’t expect to be performing surgery any time soon, neither are the readers of...
EXCMR's $2.8 Million Moves It Closer to Product Launch
EXCMR Ltd., an early-stage company based in Columbus, Ohio, is receiving $2.8 million in grants to help accelerate further development of its hydraulic treadmill.  The Ohio Third Frontier Medical Imaging  Program awarded the company $1.4 million for its project, called the...
Preparing for the Device Tax
Device manufacturers across the country aren't happy about the $20 billion tax that industry will be faced with in 2013. In Indiana, they're keeping in eye on budgets and spending in preparation for the financial hit. Kem Hawkins, president of Cook Medical (Bloomington), anticipates...
New Asthma Therapy Addresses Unmet Need
A device that has been in development for more than 10 years is now available for patients who have severe asthma. The Alair system is a catheter-based treatment that gives an alternative for treating asthma when medications haven’t worked. The device is used to perform...
Can Medical Device Makers Share?
At the Shape Memory and Superlastic Technologies (SMST) conference May 16–20, an unusual presentation was given by Craig Bonsignore (NDC). He advocated an open-source calculator to design stents (used in cardiovascular applications). This is pretty controversial because stent...
Canadian Researchers Develop New Biomaterial
Canadian researchers have created a protein-based material that could contribute to the development of artificial muscle. The elastic material mimics the structure of titan, a muscle protein. Developed at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the material was made by...
Design: A Look into the Future of Prosthetics
I had the pleasure of hearing industry pioneer Gerald Loeb, MD, speak last night about the future of prosthetics and robotics. He spoke at Stuart Karten Design in Marina del Rey, CA. Loeb, who is a professor of biomedical engineering at USC, is one of the original developers of the...
Mobile Phone Medical Device
In the upcoming February issue of MD&DI, we feature a fanciful medical device that takes the elements of a smart phone and pairs it with medical device applications. Turns out, our dream device is not so far from reality. According to the report, Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA...
Clarity on Manufacturing Rules for Combination Products May Come Soon
FDA's Office of Combination Products is expected to publish two proposed rules by the end of the year, its director said at the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society annual conference this week. Thinh Nguyen said the topics are good manufacturing practices for combination...