PharmaMedDevice Industry Blog

Crossing the line - PharmaMedDevice

PharmaMedDevice 2007 was a banner event. Pictured left is Opening Day, Tuesday, April 24, where attendees crossed the line between PharmaMedDevice and INTERPHEX. The onsite feedback from the audience, speakers and exhibitors alike was uniformly positive. Visitors  enjoyed the first year's program, the ability to cross-over to the INTERPHEX showfloor, and the overall 'BUZZ'; and it was great to hear them say so. Top companies and executives from leading combination product manufacturers were well represented. See who registered to attend in NY.

If you missed PharmaMedDevice 2007, you'll really want to make sure you catch the next edition!  The second annual event will take place March 26-28, 2008 in Philiadelphia, PA and will be co-located with INTERPHEX and Biotechnica, Europe's leading biotechnology event. Save the date here.

CT is a medical device hotbed

The medical-devices market in the U.S. totaled nearly $86 billion in 2006 - and almost $220 billion worldwide. Such statistics bode well for the Connecticut medical device market, which Bronzino (Mr. Joseph Bronzino Ph.D., P.E Executive Director - BEACON) says is thriving. In a 2004 report (the most recent available) commissioned by Northeast Utilities, BEACON charted 304 medical-devices companies and medical-devices manufacturers situated along the I-91 corridor between New Haven and Springfield, Mass.  "Probably two-thirds are in Connecticut, and many continue to expand," says Bronzino. The survey also showed two out of three companies were medical-devices manufacturers.

"A lot of the precision manufacturing companies that served the aerospace and the defense industries have diversified," Bronzino explains. "With the reduction of those industries, they have been looking for other places to use their skills. The skill set for medical devices is a natural extension of their capabilities, and has made them more survivable." Over the past five or six years, Eastern Plastics Inc. of Bristol (CT), 

Innovative Forum for Combination Products

As you may well know, the inaugural PharmaMedDevice Conference & Exhibition is taking place this month, April 24-26, 2007, at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City.  PharmaMedDevice is really the first comprehensive forum that fully illuminates the convergence of the medical device, pharmaceutical, and biologic industries. Do you know why its a "Do Not Miss' event?

Next-generation product manufacturers will converge at PharmaMedDevice to find answers to their unique regulatory challenges, create new partners, and source solutions for new product development.

Mmmm- Medical Device Info Now

MDeviceNow.com is an exciting NEW online resource providing the latest information on medical device products, services, news, and company information. Featured sections include manufacturing services announcements, new product releases, and buyer’s guide information, for FREE. MDeviceNow.com is devoted exclusively to meeting your information needs of the medical device manufacturing industry. Take a look here.

Advantages & disadvantages of combo products

AGAWAM, MASS. - April 13, 2007 - Microtest today announced that Dr. Steve Richter, Ph. D., President and Scientific Founder of Microtest, has been selected to speak at PharmaMedDevice 2007, April 24-26 in the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

Dr. Richter's speaking session, titled "Anticipated Future Challenges: Where We're Going and Where We've Been", is part of the PharmaMedDevice educational research and development track for conference attendees.

In the session, Dr. Richter will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the rapidly growing combination products category, touching on various strategies, technology, and pressing issues affecting the industry as a whole.

Vanguard of Industry Exhibitors

An excerpt from Pharmaceutical Online
...PharmaMedDevice will provide over 3,500 medical OEM companies in the Northeast with a variety of new opportunities this April. An exclusive group of cutting edge equipment and service providers will be exhibiting like the top vendors in the areas of  Contract R&D, Contract Manufacturing, Components to Drug Delivery Technology/Systems, Manufacturing Equipment & Services. Some of this year’s show exhibitors:

Device companies selling pharmaceuticals: BioAssets

I'd like to offer you this free convergence article courtesy of In Vivo: The Business & Medicine Report. Excerpt: Asked whether he (BioAssets President, James Gorman) worries that device companies might not be comfortable selling pharmaceuticals, Gorman says, "show me the company that says that. I haven't run into that yet."

Download the full article here, BioAssets: Convergence as Marketing Play, by David Cassak.

Peas in a podcast

"Truly innovative products can improve the effectiveness of medical therapies, help to achieve efficiencies, and thus become part of sustainable solutions to health care challenges. In particular, there are significant opportunities for companies to take advantage of an emerging trend—the convergence of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in combination products.  Often without the expertise to develop their own drugs, many medical device OEMs are looking for partnership and licensing opportunities with pharmaceutical companies or hiring pharma experts."

This is just a glimpse of the article titled, “Key Considerations for Developing Combination Products: Accelerate the Innovation of Combination Products to Reap First-to-Market Advantages” written by me - Christine Ford, Event Director, of PharmaMedDevice -- everyone in the industry should hear this... Enjoy!

Direct download: MP3
(This a large file, download time maybe long)

PharmaMedDevice's Podcasts are files you can download and play on any PC or media player. Click here for FAQs, if you want to find out more about digital content

Based on an article originally published in Healthcare Packaging, 2006; download the article here.

Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum launches in Philly

A few weeks ago, the first ever Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum took place. It featured speakers from Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Schering-Plough, AstraZeneca, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Healthcare Users Group. More than 175 people packed The Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia for the March 29 event. The Forum’s exhibiting sponsors included Alcoa, Design Group, Bilcare, Rexroth Bosch Group, Intellitech, Parsec, Pharmintech, Uhlmann, United Silicone, and ZPI. Package design experts Richard Gerstman and Herb Meyers even initiated  some spirited debates when they reviewed a variety of over-the-counter pharmaceutical packages. Hosted by Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World magazines, read more here. Subscribions are free! Sign up here receive the weekly  Healthcare Packaging e-mail newsletter and quarterly print publication.

Iontophoresis: Powering Drugs to Where They're Needed

By Jack Powers, editor, HealthcareNBIC.org

Popular transdermal patches that provide nicotine to recovering smokers or scopalomine to motion sickness sufferers deliver drugs that are absorbed through the skin chemically. A new class of active transdermal patches use iontophoretic or electromotive drug administration (EMD) techniques to drive the drugs through the skin with small electrical charges. One of the first products, LidoSite from Vyteris (pictured at left), is used in hospital settings to provide needle-free analgesia prior to drawing blood, inserting a catheter or performing minor dermatological procedures.

Adding electricity to the process means that the administration of drugs through the skin can be controlled more finely. An active patch for pain relief, for example, might have a button to push for an extra dose, similar to IV patient-controlled analgesia but without the needle. Or a timer might administer doses on an hourly or even daily schedule. Or feedback mechanisms might dose at changes in temperature, heart rate, blood pressure or other feedback. A short video describing the Mode of Action and the delivery options is available by clicking on the image at right.

[Editor's note: Asa Sharma, Senior Vice President of Product and Process Development for Vyteris, will be presenting a talk at the PharmaMedDevice conference in New York this month.]