The medical technology sector that encompasses medical devices and diagnostics has seen rapid progress and has influenced the healthcare delivery at various levels be at the local doctor’s clinic or a state of the art hospital’s ICU. The products of this sector are incredibly diverse that range from hand held instruments to large MRI scanners.

Several technologies influence this field such as electronics and embedded design engineering, material sciences, optics and imaging, telecom & IT, biological and nano-sciences and new manufacturing technologies.

3D printers
Additive manufacturing also referred to as ‘3D-printing’ would have the most influence on the whole value chain of medical technology industry from the process of design, prototyping to mass manufacturing strategies.

What 3D allows for is to design and manufacture locally and this would definitely have impact on how future med-tech products are regulated. The impact of this is being already felt in dental clinics where firms such as Oratio and others such as Sirona have developed  workflows for fabrication of dental implants using Objet 3D printers. Objet’s 3D printers are also being used by clinicians and surgeons in the UK to develop products for reconstructive surgeries of the knee. 3D printing firms such as Envisiontec and uPrint also offer a range of services in manufacturing of medical devices.

One can very well imagine that this technology would help in building products that can be ‘patient-matched’ and customised and this indeed is the case as exemplified the recent case of surgeons such as Prof. Justin Cobb at Imperial College, UK using Objet’s Eden 3D printer to develop patient matched fixation plates by using pre-operation modelling in knee reconstructive surgery. This landmark procedure could lead to more such interventions that will not only reduce trauma in patients but also help conserve healthy tissues of patients.

While structural integrity issues and other product safety issues would stay as concerns, however it is believed that the rapid progress and improvement in 3D printing technology would address such concerns in the foreseeable future.

3D printing would open up the process of design and prototyping as it would allow for faster iterations of med-tech product ideas and help designers to test and validate prototypes quickly. As reported recently, start-ups such as Momo Scientific (from John Hopkins) have used 3D printing technology to develop a low cost hand held product, ‘CryoPop’ to treat cervix cancer in patients. Increasingly start-ups, academics and even design teams in large corporations would use 3D printing for ‘quick-testing’ of ideas as alpha-prototypes.

The use of 3D printing is to address many other healthcare conditions and its impact would grow in the future.

Technology trends in-vitro diagnostics
Several of point-of-care diagnostic products are based on in-vitro diagnostics technologies which are an important area of growth within the medical technology sector as they provide real-time information for diagnostics and prognosis of several health conditions both chronic and infectious.

Technology trends in lab-on-chip, molecular diagnostics and sensing devices are having an impact on IVD. Firms such as Roche, Abbott, Life Technologies, GE Healthcare, Samsung and Siemens are all focused on developing and building new platforms for IVD.

R&D in microfluidic chip design using new polymers and natural fabric are being developed. The etching/embossing of tiny channels that can reliably carry and mix microfluidic amounts of solvent for further processing remains the key challenge especially in scale-up scenarios where manufacturing is automated.

In the early part of the 2000s, polymers such as PDMS (PolyDiMethylSiloxane) were increasingly used for moulding micro-channels. New materials such as teflon to even natural fibres such as silk are being tested as foundations for micro-chip design.

Firms such as Omnyx (part of the GE group) and BioImagene are focused on digital pathology, molecular imaging and monitoring platforms. Another rapidly advancing technology is genomics and platforms that integrate genomics and deliver sequencing information rapidly are increasingly helping in therapeutic decision making.

Embedded systems
Embedded systems including software technologies that make med-tech products function normally are an important avenue for R&D. The med-tech products need to behave extremely accurately showing high consistency in their output such that results are reliable and patient’s health is not compromised. New trends in this area involve developing hybrid electronic/biological systems as well as developing reliable system architecture for devices that are able to read multiple physiological indicators, systems that work well in networked environments especially in integrated systems such as national healthcare network or hospital systems and systems that can work efficiently and reliably in low cost hand held products.

Imaging
The field of imaging especially molecular imaging would also directly impact med-tech sector. Positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission tomography (SPECT) are rapidly gaining importance. A SPECT scan essentially integrates two technologies to enable imaging of the human body viz: computer aided tomography and radioactive material (that functions as a tracer). This technology allows for real time visualisation of human body and tissues (including tumours) and enables even visualisation of drugs delivery.

Optics and molecular imaging would also play an important role in surgeries especially image guided interventions and robotic-surgeries.

What the future holds?
The field of medical technologies has and is undergoing rapid technological changes that are enabling physicians to make decisions faster based on real-time information. These technological developments are also benefiting patients with improved therapeutics, lower costs and providing accessibility to healthcare delivery through creation of important hand-held devices and diagnostics.

3D printing, as mentioned before, can be a game-changer in this field especially providing customised medical devices where such an intervention is needed. Regulations of 3D manufactured devices would be crucial and it still remains to be seen how regulation of 3D printed devices would evolve. In-vitro diagnostics would also play a critical role in providing information for rapid surveillance, detection and prognosis of health conditions.

These trends in med-tech would usher in more reliable products in the future.