PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AT DEVICETALKS BOSTON
ZimVie SVP and Global Spine President Rebecca Whitney spoke passionately about their work on the Tether system for treating adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. “When you talk about kids typically aged 10 to 15, we are hopefully improving their lives for years and years to come. We take it very seriously and it is something we all are very passionate about.”BD developed one of the first rapid COVID tests in the world. BD Chair, CEO and President Tom Polen shared that the company quickly identified three things it wanted to achieve for COVID when the pandemic was brewing: Help people get diagnosed, help people get well, and help people get vaccinated.
Polen also discussed how the pandemic drove BD’s diagnostic division to new heights. “We had to scale up diagnostics from making 9 million diagnostic tests a year to 12 million a month.”
Spectrum Plastics VP of Sales for Interventional & Surgical Technologies Paul Melnychuck advised startups seeking a contract manufacturer to “be wary of empty promises. The reality is our industry, the manufacturing side of things is at or near capacity. … It’s better to play the long game.”Materials are a core challenge for manufacturing, and understanding toxicology and the effect of chemistry on the human body should be considered when designing devices. “Building into biocompatibility is critical,” said PSN Labs VP Matthew Heidecker.