Last year’s global pandemic provided valuable learning experiences for just about every market. Medical device manufacturers grappled with unprecedented supply chain and demand challenges that spurred rapid and dramatic changes to the way critical devices were designed and manufactured. Out of necessity, engineering innovation became an essential part of the solution.
Now, even as the pandemic subsides, the benefits derived from a renewed emphasis on product innovation is creating additional demand for innovation across the entire medical device industry. But the same barriers to innovation remain. Namely, that truly innovative engineering for highly reliable medical devices requires specialized skillsets to meet material and design requirements—and, most importantly, to develop the desired end-use functionality.
Most medical device organizations’ close relationships with their customers allow them to identify what the market wants—and where the market is heading next. But bringing those ideas to life often takes multiple rounds of prototyping in order to reach a final, manufacturable design that meets every specification—with every delay representing significant lost revenue. According to one McKinsey & Company survey, only 21% of executives feel they have the internal expertise, resources, and commitment to pursue these new growth opportunities successfully on their own.
Minnesota Rubber & Plastics (MRP) specializes in addressing this very challenge. For over 75 years, MRP’s materials scientists and engineers have helped in-house engineering teams develop devices and therapies with advanced elastomer and thermoplastic solutions. When presented with difficult sealing and component challenges, MRP’s team of engineers brings design experience from decades of medical device projects—and hundreds of device innovations—to offer new ideas and simple solutions to maximize device performance.
The secret to achieving faster speed-to-market and earlier consensus during the design process? Materials scientists, centralized manufacturing and specialized engineering staff that engage in a completely collaborative experience. MRP engineers are eager to get involved at the early stages of research and development, working with in-house teams from requirements building to prototyping to final production. Throughout the MRP innovation process, engineers walk in-house teams through a consultative process including exercises specifically designed to discover, design, develop and deploy a winning solution.
As the need for medical device innovation accelerates in the pandemic’s aftermath, the entire healthcare market is shifting to value return-on-investment (ROI), performance and device longevity like never before. The manufacturers that rise to the top of this new healthcare ecosystem will be those who are able to collaborate with the right experts to help them meet these rising expectations and deliver innovative solutions that tick each one of these boxes. Learn more about our medical device components capabilities.
