Reviews and News on Medical Equipment

A new report, “Medical Devices Outsourcing”, released earlier this month projects the medical device that are  outsourced to reach $42.6 billion within the next five years.  The report was compiled by GIA (Global Industry Analysts) and includes a fully comprehensive guide on the use of outsourcing in the medical devices market, which they say has been driven by increased demand.  OEMs who manufacture medical equipment are looking for ways to improve productivity and simplify their supply chain networks while continuing to cut costs in a touch economic climate.

As manufacturers of medical equipment face increasing pressure to cut costs and improve profit margins, they are still very conscious of the need to deliver cutting edge products and providing customer service that is considered superior.  As a result, they need to modernize the way they do business in this ever-changing marketplace.  Outsourcing provides OEMs the flexibility to utilize off-site facilities to assemble specific portions of their new medical devices, thereby realizing better efficiencies in their existing plants.

Aside from these benefits of efficiency, outsourcing medical equipment manufacturing also allows medical equipment suppliers to focus efforts on other areas, including R&D, technology, and marketing.  Outsourcing lets these OEMs either scale their services upwards or downwards based on customer demand, which makes a lot of sense given current economic conditions.  The easier it is to implement the creation of a new medical device, the more likely these suppliers will be able to keep up with their competitors and add new technologies to their product lines.  Contract manufacturing has gained wider acceptance in the medical equipment community and has allowed for greater efficiencies and the ability to combine many services in one-stop shops.

Some of the key players taking advantage of outsourcing include HCL’s Life Science, Minnetronix, Inc., The MedTech Group, Inc., Symmetry Medical and Heraeus Medical Components, to name a few.

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As a regular reader of medical equipment news, it is hard to miss the flood of new robotic equipment being introduced. It seems like every day another manufacturer releases a robotic surgical technique or therapeutic treatment. These developments may be exciting to patients who appreciate the precision and availability of robotic medical equipment, but the more advanced they become the more it could threaten the future of the medical profession.

Surgical robots aren’t the only threat to a traditional doctor’s livelihood. Innovations in electronic medical records and advancements in “telemedicine” are also changing the way medical professionals interact with patients. For example, in some rural areas and remote locations, robots are acting as “remote specialists” to administer care to patients who need a rapid diagnosis in a critical care situation.

In cases where a patient has suffered a stroke, these robotic specialists are able to communicate with a patient and a big-city hospital to determine the best course of treatment before the window of opportunity closes. With these robots, doctors can actually see and speak with patients directly using the robot’s video camera. They can also view test results and decide whether a patient is a good candidate for the clot-dissolving drug, tPA.

When robots can be used in situations like this, it’s easy to see why a physician or specialist would feel threatened, but the use of robotics in medicine is all about saving lives and making healthcare more accurate and efficient. They are also welcome news for insurance providers and medical equipment manufacturers. Even patients are getting used to the idea of robots in a health care setting. And while it is doubtful that the introduction of this new technology will have any real impact on job security for practicing doctors, if these advancements continue to progress this rapidly it could change the nature of the medical profession.

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According to a new study by the Mayo Clinic, transoral robotic surgery can now be safely used to treat certain cancers in the throat. Researchers found that transoral robots offer profound advantages for effective treatment of the tonsils and tongue and allow patients to recover more quickly.

Robotic medical equipment is nothing new, but it seems like medical equipment manufacturers are discovering new applications for this technology every day. In the case of traditional tongue and tonsil cancer surgery, complications during the procedure and the recurrence of tumors have been a challenge for surgeons. However, when using a transoral robot for surgery, patients in this study experienced no major complications, and none of their tumors returned. They were also able to swallow on their own much sooner, resulting in shorter hospital stays.

One of the study authors is Dr. Eric Moore, a head and neck surgeon from the Mayo Clinic. He and his team performed 45 surgeries using this new transoral robotic medical equipment. They were able to cut down the average hospital stay from 10 days to 2.3 days. In addition, they were able to dramatically reduce the amount of time a typical patient must use feeding tubes after surgery. With transoral robotic surgery, feeding tubes were removed in a week to 10 days, where the average patient getting traditional surgery would have needed them for two to three months.

With results like these, transoral robotic surgery is expected to become a more commonly used technique for removing cancerous tumors from the throat. Expect to see many medical equipment suppliers stepping in to serve this need.

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