There’s No Sense in Reinventing the Wheel

Originally Published MPMN June 2007

EDITOR'S PAGE

There's No Sense in Reinventing the Wheel

Sometimes the best innovations in medical devices are the ones that don’t try to reinvent the wheel. They just try to improve it.

For example, the invention of coronary stents was a pretty big deal. But it took nearly 20 years from conception until one was actually implanted in a human heart. Along the way there were many modifications and improvements until the devices were ready for human use.

But medical device product engineers didn’t stop there. Always looking to perfect their products, creators came up with new variations, such as drug-eluting stents. A few years ago, these new stents were considered so revolutionary that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) already had in place reimbursement guidelines for them before they were approved for use. The agency was willing to pay 17% more for the drug-eluting stents than their bare counterparts.

Then product designers looked to new applications for that technology. Now, urinary tract, carotid artery, rectal, duodenal, tracheal, and biliary stents are in use. And improvements are being made all the time.

So after all these years of covering medical device innovations, we at MPMN are taking a cue from product designers. Starting with this issue, we’ve made some tweaks to improve what we think was already a pretty good product.

Our primary goal was to make MPMN easier to use. In the following pages, we believe we’ve done that.

We know that you need to know how to get the products and services we cover so we’ve made that easier. Contact information for items you’re looking for is now called out with a brightly colored box, so it’s easier to locate.

We’ve also renamed some of our features so that you’ll be able to tell at a glance what the articles are about. For example, our feature previously titled Profile is now called Engineering Solutions, and it will present just that—solutions that a supplier has provided to an OEM that will help with a particular challenge. Our old Hotline section, featuring the latest innovations in products and services, is now more appropriately named Breakthroughs. It’s also more conveniently located in each issue as the last page in the magazine.

We’ve expanded our Industry News section to include longer trend pieces and occasional R&D stories. In order to reflect the broader content, we’ve renamed it Need To Know.

We kept what was good about the magazine and refreshed the rest. But we always strive to improve. We hope you enjoy our new look and content. We welcome your comments and suggestions for any changes or additions you’d like to see.

Susan Shepard, Editor

Copyright ©2007 Medical Product Manufacturing News