Medical Plastics Conference at Chinaplas to offer industry insight and expertise

The organisers of Chinaplas say this year’s Medical Plastics Conference offers informative, practical solutions given by global experts, material providers and medical device manufacturers.

The organisers of Chinaplas say this year’s Medical Plastics Conference offers informative topics and practical solutions given by experts, material providers and medical device manufacturers from around the world.

The medical industry is growing fast as economies develop, populations expand, societies age, and health care awareness increases.

MarketsandMarkets, a global market research and consulting company has projected that the global medical plastics market will reach a US$6.9 billion value in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of US7% from 2015 to 2020. Global sales in 2015 soared to US$1.1 trillion for the pharmaceutical industry market, while medical devices sales reached US$350 billion, according to PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, a leading global resource for processing and packaging.

Meanwhile, the Chinese medical equipment industry is divided and without focus. The low industry concentration means imports monopolize the high-end segment. However, as the central government increases its effort in promoting medical industry, the sector is about to make a breakthrough. Diagnostic imaging devices take up about 37% of China’s medical equipment market; followed by disposables at 25%. Dental equipment is a fast-rising sector that cannot be ignored.

Hydrogels, implantable devices are on discussion at Chinaplas

Compared with developed countries such as the US, the usage rate of orthopaedic implants is relatively low in China. As population ageing speeds up, health awareness increases and income rises, the orthopaedic implants industry is poised for huge growth in the next five years.One of the keynote speakers in the conference, Len Czuba, president of Czuba Enterprises, said: “As the modern society expands the reach of its benefits to the most remote parts of our populated world, medical devices must be able to support healthcare delivery within the limitations of local infrastructures. Designing 'intelligent' medical devices can significantly improve the product development lead time and reduce costs.”

Czuba will give a presentation at the conference on the theme of ‘Implantable device development - from product design, material selection to production’. He will look at several case studies showing medical device components such as an IV fluid manifold made with a complicated mould requiring three axis “action” of motion or moving inserts. A challenge of the process was to help resolve a knit line problem with a drug delivery inhaler.

An ever-growing class of biomaterials utilised in the medical device industry is polymeric hydrogels. They can be natural or synthetic, chemically or physically cross-linked and are used in the medical device industry in a range of diverse applications. These can range from contact lenses to wound healing bandages, bone repair scaffolds, or even catheters. Production of hydrogels with strong mechanical strength is a focus for medical industry.

Dr Austin Coffey, professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland and Thammasat University in Thailand will inform visitors on the methods of hydrogel manufacture, discuss the chemistry of how they work and use a number of real-life industrial applications to show how hydrogels have become a crucial class of material in the toolbox of the modern medical device manufacturer.

Speaking ahead of the show, Coffey said: “I will talk about the surfaces of materials being used for minimally invasive applications. These include angioplasty and urinary catheters, whereby the surface needs to have as little resistance between the device and the internal tissue / arteries as possible.”Coffey will address the effect of sterilisation on these materials and will have a number of key take-home points for all attendees in relation to how they can design ‘intelligent’ medical devices for a wide range of applications, including the treatment of arterial aneurysms and accurate artificial blood vessel development for bench testing purposes.

Prospects of medical plastics in China

Biomaterial for the medical industry is an emerging sector in China, with growth rate far outpacing the country’s GDP. Biomaterials are currently used mainly in production of medical equipment for clinical applications. It has become a strong pillar of the medical device industry, with market share of up to 40-50%.In 2015, the sales of Chinese biomaterials medical device totalled around RMB144.4 billion with an average annual growth rate of 17.2%. Within 10 years, China is about to become the world’s second largest market biomaterials medical device market.

TPRI has 5,000sqm of clean room facilities which include advanced plastic processing machines, laboratory instruments and testing equipments. The facilities have also passed the ISO 13485 certification for quality management in medical devices. It specialises in cardiovascular, anaesthesia and respiration and neurosurgical products. Wang Ming is the vice president and senior engineer of Tianjin Plastics Research Institute Co.

Wang will invite discussion on the major future trends such as biomaterials and how the enterprises can enter the supply chain undergoing all these changes.