India’s medical devices major MediVed Innovations Pvt Ltd is poised to expand its presence in the contract design, development and manufacturing space. Moving beyond its capability as an in-house producer of advanced cardiac implants and pacemakers, MediVed now plans to offer a spectrum of sophisticated electro mechanical diagnostic and therapeutics devices to global customers.

The move to embark on the contract business path follows a current trend in the world markets where companies in the West are transforming business models to cater to the needs of the emerging markets which make up 4/5th of the global demand. With these markets looking at cost and utility of medical devices as crucial factors, global majors will now have to look at design and manufacturing hubs in Asia and India in particular to tap the quality-cost advantage that will help improve gross margins. “This is where MediVed has started proving its mettle in ‘design to cost’ for medical devices where innovative features need to be retained while catering to the emerging markets,” Dinesh Puri chairman & managing director, MediVed Innovations told Pharmabiz.

MediVed which is in the league of the top six world class medical devices companies has the district advantage with its competitive cost and technical competence.

“We are good at complex capability at electro mechanical diagnostic and therapeutics devices besides implantable devices and active implantables like pacemakers,” he added.

MediVed is currently doing five pilots for customers in the US. The assignments which are in various phases of development, are a test to its capability in complex devices that range from surgical to dental and diagnostics equipment apart from implantable devices. But since pilots take a long time to convert into revenues, MediVed is keen to tap the contract business space immediately to diversify its revenue streams. By fiscal 2010, it is confident of generating Rs 150-crore turnover where contract assignments and its Stellar brand pacemakers will provide a 50:50: contribution. The business opportunity in medical devices globally is close to US$ 200.

Therefore the company is going beyond it core capability of design and production of implantable pacemaker technology to offer its expertise across all medical devices to discerning global customers. This will cover high precision machining of components, sub assemblies to printed circuit boards assembling, sourcing of implantable grade materials and sterile packaging, global sourcing of bio gradable materials which are implantable grade materials steel, noble metals, novel biomaterials like nitinol, polymers, silicones, epoxy, that are of medical grade.

“We are leveraging our capability in quality and competence from electrical-electronics-mechanical engineering to software. This is possible because of our state-of-the-art ISO 13485 compliant in-house multi disciplinary engineering and manufacture infrastructure that includes micro electronics, polymer sciences, bio mechanical, laser welding-hermetic sealing which is supported by 100,000 class clean room and complex device assembly areas. There is also high degree of skill in presenting the documentation details of Medical Devices Manufacturing Quality Management Systems for regulatory compliance, he said.