As medical device makers strive to turn ideas into products that improve patient care, they are increasingly outsourcing to specialized design companies, polymer providers and contract manufacturers. These partners must help device makers drive products to market quickly while ensuring the highest quality standards. There’s also a critical need for partners who can help simplify supply chains, reduce risk, and improve accountability.

As outlined in our new eBook, Choosing the Right Partner for Your Next Medical Device, OEMs and startups alike increasingly see the advantages of working with an integrated provider that can support projects from concept to commercialization. Ability to serve as a one-stop shop serving the full product lifecycle is one of the two leading factors of competitive advantage for contract medtech providers today, along with high quality standards, according to a recent Mass MEDIC industry report.

An integrated approach creates continuity across the development functions, reducing the risk of delays caused by handoffs when working with multiple suppliers. For instance, Lubrizol offers a unique combination of integrated capabilities for devices where polymer chemistry and production are especially important.

Device design and development process

In fact, we strengthened our end-to-end capabilities with the 2019 acquisition of Bavaria Medizin Technologie GmbH (BMT), a pioneer in catheter-based technologies with a worldwide customer base. Located near Munich, BMT was founded in 1992 by a group of scientists and cardiologists and today is a leading designer and manufacturer of intravascular and nonvascular devices. The Munich facility gives us a global footprint in combination with our U.S. Device Design Center in Corona, California, in the heart of Southern California’s medical device industry.

These capabilities integrate with our traditional strengths in polymer formulation and contract manufacturing. We invented TPU in 1959 while part of BF Goodrich Specialty Chemicals, which was acquired by Lubrizol in 2004. We have served more than 750 medical device companies in over 40 countries since the 1970s. That gives us experience and expertise matched by few if any medical device design firms or contractors. Drawing on this deep background, we develop customized solutions that offer limitless possibilities to improve product design and performance.

Lubrizol Life Health Science provides contract manufacturing exclusively for the global life science industry, producing more than 85 million medical device components, assemblies, and devices per year in facilities certified to ISO 13485:2016 standards. As part of an integrated team, we partner with customers and designers throughout the process to ensure devices are designed for manufacturability. We incorporate engineering support, a proven quality management process, and continuous improvement for manufacturing efficiency to ensure we deliver a consistent product to meet precise specifications, time and again.

The Single-Provider Advantage

We bring these capabilities together to offer a unique integrated approach to medical device development. By collaborating with our customers across the full product development lifecycle, we deliver solutions that enable our customers to empower clinicians and help people to live longer, healthier and more productive lives.

To learn more, please download Choosing the Right Partner for Your Next Medical Device.

The Advantages of an Integrated Approach to Medtech Development