Innovative Medical Devices at Medtec

MotionTouch had a great trip to Medtec this week.  The show is a showcase for the designers, manufacturers and component suppliers to the medical industry.  The show is an opportunity to meet up with existing and potential MotionTouch clients as well as suppliers and in our case also an ex-colleague Dylan Llewellyn at EuroTec the speaker company.  Everybody involved with MotionTouch will remember Dylan as incredibly bright with an encyclopaedic knowledge of technology.  He loves his new role at Eurotec where they supply speaker to companies like Airbus, Aerospace was always Dylan’s first love.

The show proved that the medical technology sector is booming and British and European companies are doing very well.  The Medical Device Directive and ISO 13485 are very stringent controls for how medical equipment is designed, tested, manufactured and marketed.  There is a justifiable and inevitable overhead in terms of time and resources to meet these standards.  What is clear is that companies who take the system to heart are powering innovation in a way that puts less regulated sectors to shame.  There is, of course, a very big carrot in the medical device arena.  The potential profits are huge.  There were relatively young companies at Medtec who are growing very fast and booking big profits.

One of the most fascinating products on display was a bionic knee for amputees.  The knee responds to electrical impulses in the nervous system and provides for walking and running.  Amazingly the knees are also designed for double amputees and have built in WiFi.  Using WiFi the knees communicate with each other to co-ordinate balance and movement.

A Dutch company, Variass, were also exhibiting a new system for transporting transplant organs.  Instead of transporting them cooled the organs are kept at body temperature.  To keep them alive they are continuously pumped with an oxygenated liquid with similar properties to blood.  They can be kept like this for 24hrs.  The result is healthier organs arriving for transplant and therefore increased success rates.  Paul Keijser, a very modest man, took a lot of time to talk us through the technology and explain the benefits.  It is just one of a number of innovative products from Variass.

Following closely from my visit to IDS in Cologne, it is clear that the healthcare sector is brimming with new product innovation.