Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

Phillips-Medisize is offering connected health data services: Here’s how

February 20, 2019 By Chris Newmarker

One of the world’s largest medical device contract manufacturers, Phillips-Medisize is making a business play to provide the technological back end for connected drug delivery devices.

Phillips-Medisize Connected Health Platform

[Image courtesy of Phillips-Medisize]

Phillips-Medisize used to be all about the housings, assembly and packaging that went into finished drug-delivery devices. Electronics was something that other contract manufacturers did.

Within a few years, the situation has dramatically changed.

Phillips-Medisize — a Hudson, Wis.–based contract manufacturer with thousands of workers at dozens of facilities around the world — has become not only focused on connected drug-delivery devices but also on the data systems behind them. Company officials say they already have more than 25 potential customers in the pipeline for their third-generation Connected Health Platform, an FDA-registered medical device data system that rolled out in October 2018.

How Phillips-Medisize got into the data systems business is but one example of medtech contract manufacturers adapting to an age in which every product seems to have some kind of digital or connected feature.

In the case of drug-delivery devices, a number of factors came together at once, according to Kevin Deane, Phillips-Medisize’s VP of innovation. The proliferation of smartphones and IoT-based technical solutions made pharmaceutical company executives aware of what was possible. Plus, more blockbuster medicines were combination products requiring injection or inhalation devices that were easier to connect.

Perhaps most important of all, there was the shift toward outcome-based reimbursement in healthcare systems in the U.S. and around the world.

“If you’re thinking about outcome, you need ways to measure that your drug is effective – and also know that people are taking the drug as intended,” Deane told Medical Design & Outsourcing.

Phillips-Medisize officials saw a business opportunity when it came to providing the data systems behind connected drug-delivery devices, according to the company’s CTO, Bill Welch.

“The very same reason that they’re coming to us for their device combination product manufacturing is the exact same reason why they’re coming to us for this service. Focus on the drug, on the go-to-market part of it, and let service providers handle the other activities,” Welch said.

How the Connected Health Platform happened

Two business deals in 2016 provided Phillips-Medisize the resources to not only become a connected drug-delivery device maker, but also a data services company.

First, it purchased Medicom Innovation Partner, a development outfit in Denmark and the U.K. with a focus on connected drug-delivery devices. Within months, the Koch Industries company Molex bought Phillips-Medisize, an acquisition that gave Phillips-Medisize access to Molex’s extensive electronics manufacturing capabilities.

“We’ve got that full ability to manufacture the complete device from mechanical, electronic as well as other supply chain components — and in the case of combination products, putting the drug into the device,” Welch said. “So, it’s giving you a finished, package-labeled combination product that in some cases could include electronics.”

Medicom had already helped Bayer with the data platform management behind the Betaconnect autoinjector for people with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis. The system includes a mobile app for patients and a web portal that enables specialist health providers, based on each patient’s specific consent, to review a patient’s injection history and provide support.

A second project with an undisclosed pharmaceutical company is in the validation stage.

“If you’ve done the same thing twice, and you can see the market building in this area, it’s foolish to develop the same thing a third time,” Deane said. “It made sense to look at something that was a broader platform that we could reuse. This is the project that we’ve been working on over the last year and a half.”

Avoiding pitfalls

Phillips-Medisize’s Connected Health Platform has information-sharing and analytics capabilities, as well as cybersecurity and streamlined regulatory documentation. One thing Deane, Welch, and others at the company consciously decided not to provide in the base package was a mobile app.

“Our belief is that every application in every disease state is going to require a slightly different interface. Since that interface will then be targeted directly to the need of the patient within that disease area, it will require a separate mobile app,” Deane said.

Not including the apps in the base package also allowed Phillips-Medisize to avoid a greater level of regulatory burden, since apps can involve healthcare decision-making and could be classified as a mobile medical device application.

Phillips-Medisize also avoided reinventing the wheel. The foundation of the Connected Health Platform’s information-sharing and analytics comes from Cambridge, Mass.–based InterSystems HealthShare, which also counts electronic patient records giant Epic among its customers. InterSystems indicates that their technology supports the electronic health records of 500 million people around the world, with customers in more than 80 countries.

“InterSystems has their business figured out: interoperability, global deployments and security. … It only made sense for us to take advantage of that,” Welch said.

Patient anonymity is also an important part of the Connected Health Platform.

“We’re serving the data in a secure fashion, but we’re not analyzing or manipulating that data ourselves,” Deane said.

Phillips-Medisize is also making the investments needed to maintain the system as it grows.

“What we’ve been investing in is the service and support that is needed to deploy and maintain a system like this. The inherent challenge is synchronizing the rapidly changing mobile comms sector with the slower, but longer lasting, pharma and healthcare sector.  This goes beyond just call center and technical support. We are incorporating post market surveillance and customer complaint handling in-line with expected medical device practices,” Deane said. “And we’re being very proactive in testing new mobile OS releases and phone models against our platform and apps, continually making the changes and modifications in a way that is seamless from our customers’ point of view.” 

Moving up the value chain

Phillips-Medisize isn’t the only company seeking to provide the technological plumbing needed to make connected drug-delivery and other medical devices work, according to Tim Gee, principal at Medical Connectivity Consulting in Beaverton, Ore. For example, Validic (Durham, N.C.) for a number of years has provided a technology platform for digital health data.

“I think Phillips-Medisize saw that and decided, ‘Out of all these different areas it’s something that plays to our strengths,’” Gee said. “They’re moving up the value chain.”

Related Articles Read More >

May 2022 MDO Medical Design & Outsourcing cloud computing
May 2022 Issue: The cloud is transforming medtech
Spectrum Instrumentation
Spectrum Instrumentation providing PCIe-cards for Nvidia Clara developer PC
Stryker Mako robotic-arm assisted surgery robotic digital health medtech
How Stryker is advancing digital healthcare
Johnson & Johnson J&J DePuy Synthes
How Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Synthes is shifting toward digital

DeviceTalks Weekly.

June 24, 2022
How innovative design, commercial strategy is building Cala Trio’s bioelectronic medicine market
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech