Medical Devices Cluster Gains Strength in California's Wine Country

Northern California is economically best known for Silicon Valley, which could become a medical devices valley if the industry continues to concentrate more on communications-related medical technology innovations.

But a medtech cluster has also been growing in the North Bay--in wine country, where Minnesota-based device giant Medtronic is one of Sonoma County's largest employers and where several former employees from Medtronic and other companies have started their own businesses.

One such company started last year in the materials space, focusing on medical-grade fiber for a wide variety of medtech applications including heart valves, endovascular stents, and orthopedic products. Windsor, CA-based RxFiber was started by Rob Torgerson, whom Medtronic recruited into the North Bay nearly a decade ago.

RxFiber officials say they were able to find a perfect facility for their startup needs at an affordable price in a newer industrial park near several other medtech companies. Plus, they get to be located in a more affluent, wine country setting, just an hour's drive north of San Francisco.

"Even though our customers are outside the North Bay, we are hopeful the local and surrounding medtech companies will leverage local OEM's resources, like RxFiber. The more the North Bay cluster of medtech companies support each other, the more each company will be able to thrive and support the local economy and help create jobs," Torgerson says.

While Silicon Valley is the land of IT and genomics wizardry colliding with medical devices, the North Bay is more of a place for companies in the nuts and bolts of the business (or in this case, textiles, and stents).

Other medtech-related companies in the North Bay include TriVascular (stent graft systems), Osseon Therapeutics (vertebral augmentation devices), Sonoma Orthopedic Products (bone fracture treatment), Claret Medical (brain-protecting catheters), and Direct Flow Medical (transcatheter aortic valve system).

Sonoma County residents also appear to be doing better than their peers across California. More than half the households make more than $64,343 annually; it is $61,632 across the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty is less and the percent of residents with a college degree is higher.

Brenda Gilchrist, vice president of operations at RxFiber thinks the North Bay medical device industry is primed for even research and development and growth:

"As the economy continues to [recover], I predict the larger companies will see increased turnover as unemployment decreases, providing opportunities for the smaller medtech companies in the North Bay to attract seasoned talent. The transfer of talent to the smaller companies, in my opinion, will expand the R&D opportunities in the North Bay. I also feel that more North Bay engineers, many of whom are our friends, will take the leap and start up new medtech related companies. Some of our friends are already developing business plans and starting up in their garage."

And Gilchrist suspects not being in an urban area has its advantages, especially since Sonoma has plenty of medical device experts in its emerging medtech cluster: "Being in a smaller community, like Sonoma, we often have access to people that we would have never been able to meet, had we been in a larger metropolitan area."

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