How Mobile Health Is Changing a MedTech ManufacturerHow Mobile Health Is Changing a MedTech Manufacturer

Maybe you call it mobile health, telehealth, or connected health. Contract manufacturer Phillips-Medisize calls it "self health."

The Hudson, WI-based company's CEO Matt Jennings sees it as one of the major technological shifts that will affect Phillips-Medisize and many other medtech manufacturer's businesses for years to come: people taking control of their own health information and using it to treat themselves, including self-administration of pharmaceuticals.

"The trend is really self," Jennings said during a Wednesday morning news conference at MD&M West in Anaheim, CA. And Jennings suspects that manufacturers such as Phillips-Medisize have a big role to play.

Jennings briefly mentioned Eric Topol, MD, whom Jennings first met during his time as a medtech executive in Ohio. The former head of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, Topol is now chief academic officer at San Diego-Scripps Health, where he has been pioneering technologies such as tiny blood stream nano sensor chips that might sense the precursor of a heart attack.

Apple and Google executives have meanwhile been meeting with the FDA. Apple appears to be considering healthcare-related features for the iWatch, while Google says it is developing a glucose-monitoring contact lens.

Phillips-Medisize might not make the electronic guts of mobile health-related devices. But its experience helping to design and make devices such as auto-injectors, blood glucose meters, and inhalation drug delivery devices means that it has the experience to make ergonomic, long-lasting housings for such devices, Jennings says.

The company already designs and contract manufactures devices which incorporate electronics and software programs. Phillips-Medisize integrates the components into the manufacturing process during assembly of the finished devices.  

"That is the playground that we can play in," Jennings says.

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Mobile features already being used in diabetes devices could soon expand to devices for delivering drugs to cancer patients and much more, and that is another opportunity for Phillips-Medisize.

Phillips-Medisize's revenue has been growing since the depths of the Great Recession and is on tract to reach $565 million this year.

Other important trends for the company include added capabilities for OEMs, especially the ability to handle drugs and biologics on-site at its facility as it creates devices.  Smaller 750,000- to 5-million-units-a-year lines have become fully automated in developed world countries such as the United States. And Phillips-Medisize's overseas expansion continues. 

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of MPMN and Qmed. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.