Medical plastic innovation 2015: Editor's pick
2015 has been a busy year for the medical plastics sector. Lu Rahman handpicks her favourite stories of the year that highlight the innovation that keeps on coming from the sector
Something of substance
The importance of materials in the medical plastics sector goes without saying and it was good news for bisphenol A (BPA). Following controversy over its use, the start of the year saw the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) re-evaluate exposure and toxicity of the product concluding it posed no health risk to consumers of any age group (including unborn children, infants and adolescents) at current exposure levels. Exposure from the diet or from a combination of sources is considerably under the safe level – the tolerable daily intake (TDI).
Cover story
As always, the MPN team took its annual trip to Compamed at the end of 2014. Eastman drew visitors’ attention with its new Eastalite copolyester, the company’s first opaque offering to the European medical packaging portfolio. The company teamed up with Carolex packaging to showcase the new material at the event. Eastman Eastalite copolyester is billed as a sustainable alternative to high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) for opaque rigid medical packaging and has been designed to be a cost-effective, styrene-free material that is easier to process.
“Eastman Eastalite copolyester is the first step toward creating lightweight packaging, and the unique product will open new opportunities for specific medical applications,” said Laurent Bouchet, commercial director, VitasheetGroup Carolex.
Life Lines
More innovation came later in the year via an injectable polymer from the University of Washington which could prevent soldiers and trauma patients from bleeding to death.
University of Washington researchers have developed a new injectable polymer that strengthens blood clots, called PolySTAT. Administered in a simple shot, the polymer finds any unseen or internal injuries and starts working immediately and when a tourniquet won’t stop bleeding.
The new polymer, described in a paper featured in Science Translational Medicine, could become a first line of defence in everything from battlefield injuries to rural car accidents to search and rescue missions deep in the mountains. It has been tested in rats and researchers say it could reach human trials in five years.
NanoGriptech was another company pushing forward innovation in this field. Strange as it might sound, the company has produced a gecko-inspired adhesive, Setex, that it says is the world’s first dry adhesive inspired by the microscopic hairs of a gecko’s foot.
The technology is being put forward as a solution to a range of medical applications and is said to offer friction enhancement to skin. The company says that current gripping material used on orthotics, braces, prosthetics, face masks and other medical equipment that comes in contact with skin often slip, become contaminated or use materials that smell over time. Such materials do not work well with concave surfaces or in situations that need low profile, non-tacky gripping. NanoGriptech says that Setex offers an alternative in this area.
The technology can also be used for surgical tool grip. The current challenge is surgical tool design is to create tools that improve grip without tacky contaminants or adding profile that decreases touch-sensitivity and NanoGripTech says this technology enables surgical tool providers to create sterile tool grips improve gripping performance, without residue or bulkiness.
Let’s Get Digital
It would have been difficult to miss plethora of digital health devices and wearables to hit the sector in the last year. The MPN team launched a sister website dedicated to this important and growing market – www.digitlahealthage.com – as well as the #Let’s Get digital campaign to support the work being done in this field by medtech companies.
Let’s Get Digital was launched in August this year as a sounding board the people who actually use medical devices (specifically digitally-enabled ones) to work with industry on improving designs, features and software. Making use of social media, surveys and other online forums, the project’s founders are busy compiling a list of the most important things for device makers to consider.
The project also hopes to work with government and policymakers to help improve digital switchovers and transition processes within hospitals.
In the January- February issue, Gavin Wheeldon, Purple WiFi asked whether wearable technology will help us live a healthier life. He said: “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Expect to see more wearable technology introduced to your local gym or running club, or we could even be experiencing the beginning of the end for the gym, at least as we know it. Wearable technology is enabling us to exercise how we want, when we want, with all the motivation of a personal trainer as well as the best advice, simply through technology you wear.”
Wheeldon picked pout some key wearables: “At this year’s CES in Las Vegas we saw a range of exciting health and fitness wearables, including Emiota's smart belt, which is an activity tracker that also automatically adjusts belt settings to your standing and seated position so that it’s never uncomfortable, and it can also loosen when you’ve had a large meal.
Healbe's GoBe fitness tracker can track calorie intake purely from a wrist-based sensor and Quell offers wearable pain relief by using sensors to stimulate nerve endings in the calf, which send signals to your brain encouraging it to release your natural opiates.
UpRight focuses on improving your posture, a preventative aid to eliminate your chances of developing back problems. This small wearable device sits in the small of your back and delivers gentle vibrations to alert you when you are slouching and need to straighten up.”
Meanwhile Dr Cees Van Berkel, principal scientist at Philips Research UK, summed up how important collaboration is in the digital health market: “Telehealth has traditionally been seen as a patient monitoring tool following a hospital discharge, but by working in true collaboration with partners and GPs, we’ve managed to look at ways where telehealth can help in the primary care setting. Collaboration was essential to gaining the insights required and ensuring that what was suggested didn’t impede on the GPs’ roles and responsibilities but instead brought them into the mix from day one. The resulting ideas and services have consequently been widely championed in the region.”
The printed word
The last few years have all been about 3D printing but in March 4D printing took centre stage.
4D printing is self-reconfiguration or self- transformation – printed elements in a strand, sheet or 3D object that transform into another shape through the use of energy. The materials being developed are capable of transforming themselves without human intervention. These ‘smart’ materials have properties which allow them to transform from one state into their programmed state through the use of water as an activation energy.
Skylar Tibbits, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke to MPN about the potential this technology has for medical manufacture:
“We have an opportunity to make every material a smart material that will respond to any energy source – the medical space right for this. There are a range of sectors showing interest in 4D printing and medical is one of them.”
Tibbits said the only barriers to the uptake of 4D printing in the medical sector will be the industry itself and regulations.
While there was excitement about 4D printing, its 3D counter-part was still very much at the forefront of the sector. According to a study presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s Annual Scientific Meeting, 3D printing could become a powerful tool for customising radiology treatments to a patient’s needs, allowing clinicians to construct devices to a specific size and shape.
“It gives us the ability to construct devices that meet patients’ needs, from their unique anatomy to specific medicine requirements. And as tools in interventional radiology, these devices are part of treatment options that are less invasive than traditional surgery,” said Horacio D’Agostino, lead researcher and interventional radiologist at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUH).
Carbon dating
Other innovation came from Carbon3D which offers polymer-based 3D printing that promises to advance the industry beyond basic prototyping to 3D manufacturing. The new Continuous Liquid Interface Production technology (CLIP) harnesses light and oxygen to continuously grow objects from a pool of resin instead of printing them layer-by-layer. According to Carbon3D its CLIP technology raises the bar in 3D printing in three ways: It has a game-changing speed which is 25-100 times faster than conventional 3D printing; commercial quality – produces objects with consistent mechanical properties and material choice – it enables a range of polymeric materials.
Take my device
In the summer Medirio claimed that its integrated insulin delivery device was ‘revolutionary’ allowing every insulin pen user to manage insulin injections in an easier, discreet and more comfortable way. The device has been designed comfort in mind and so that the user needs no more than one prick every three days. Medirio says the device is cost-effective and unable to be hacked.
Dassault Systèmes’ Living Heart Project proved to be of great interest to MPN readers. Offering a high-fidelity scientifically validated 3D simulator of a four-chamber human heart this device gives manufacturers, researchers and medical professionals the ability to perform virtual tests and visualise the heart’s response in ways that are not possible with traditional physical testing.
The Living Heart model offers a baseline healthy heart, which can be used to study congenital defects or heart disease by modifying the shape and tissue properties in an easy-to-use software editor. Medical devices can be inserted into the simulator to study their influence on cardiac function, validate their efficacy and predict reliability under a range of operating conditions. For example, coronary stents can be evaluated for optimal type, size and placement to achieve the best performance.
Offering a new twist on an old device, the Eko Core stethoscope allows doctor to see heartbeats in wave form on a mobile device as well as hear the sound at an amplified level. Both the visible and audible data can be recorded and shared between physicians and hospitals. This can take a lot of the guesswork out of detecting murmurs, valve problems, and blockages in the arteries.
The device came about when a member of Eko Devices was diagnosed with a heart murmur as a child. This experience was behind the decision to develop a tool that would increase the diagnostic accuracy of clinicians and support them in differentiating between innocent and pathologic heart murmurs at the point of care in order to avoid unnecessary referrals, anxiety, and expensive screenings.