'Medical Plastics Conference' at CHINAPLAS 2017

CHINAPLAS 2017 is gearing up for its third annual Medical Plastics Conference, which is shaping up to be its biggest event yet, covering new technologies and solutions given by experts, materials providers and medical device manufacturers from all over the world.

Visitors to the 3rd Medical Plastics Conference at CHINAPLAS 2017 are invited to sign up to the show as soon as possible in order to take full advantage of very latest knowledge and technologies for medical plastics.

An industry expanding

The global medical industry growing as technologies develop, populations expand, societies age, and healthcare awareness increases.

Global market research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets has projected that the global medical plastics market will reach a $6.9 billion value in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of seven per cent from 2015 to 2020. Global sales in 2015 soared to $1.1 trillion for the pharmaceutical industry market, while medical devices sales reached $350 billion, according to PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, a leading global resource for processing and packaging.

In the meantime, the Chinese medical equipment industry is divided and without focus. The low industry concentration means imports monopolise the high-end segment. However, as the Central Government increases its effort in promoting medical industry, the sector is about to make a breakthrough. Diagnostic imaging devices take up about 37 per cent of China’s medical equipment market; followed by disposables at 25 per cent. Meanwhile, dental equipment is a fast-rising sector that cannot be ignored.

Compared with developed countries such as the US, the usage rate of orthopedic implants is relatively low in China. As population ageing speeds up, health awareness increases and income rises, the orthopaedic implants industry is poised for huge growth in the next five years.

"As the modern society expands the reach of its benefits to the most remote parts of our populated world, medical devices must be able to support healthcare delivery within the limitations of local infrastructures," said Len Czuba, President of Czuba Enterprises and Conference Keynote. "Designing 'intelligent' medical devices can significantly improve the product development lead time and reduce costs."

Mr Czuba will give a presentation at the conference on the theme of ‘Implantable device development - from product design, material selection to production’. He will look at several case studies showing medical device components such as an IV fluid manifold made with a complicated mould requiring three axis "action" of motion or moving inserts. A challenge of the process was to help resolve a knit line problem with a drug delivery inhaler.

An ever-growing class of biomaterials utilised in the medical device industry is polymeric hydrogels. They can be natural or synthetic, chemically or physically cross-linked and are used in the medical device industry in a range of diverse applications. These can range from contact lenses to wound healing bandages, bone repair scaffolds, or even catheters. Production of hydrogels with strong mechanical strength is a focus for medical industry.

Dr Austin Coffey, a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland and Thammasat University in Thailand, will inform CHINAPLAS visitors on the methods of hydrogel manufacture, discuss the chemistry of how they work and use a number of real-life industrial applications to show how hydrogels have become a crucial class of material in the toolbox of the modern medical device manufacturer.

"I will talk about the surfaces of materials being used for minimally invasive applications," said Coffey. "These include angioplasty and urinary catheters, whereby the surface needs to have as little resistance between the device and the internal tissue/arteries as possible."

Dr Coffey will address the effect of sterilisation on these materials and will have a number of key take-home points for all attendees in relation to how they can design 'intelligent' medical devices for a wide range of applications, including the treatment of arterial aneurysms and accurate artificial blood vessel development for bench testing purposes.

Medical plastics prospects in China

Biomaterial for the medical industry is an emerging sector in China, with growth rate far outpacing the country’s GDP. At the moment, biomaterials are used mainly in production of medical equipment for clinical applications. It has become a strong pillar of the medical device industry, with market share of up to 40-50 per cent.

In 2015, the sales of Chinese biomaterials medical device amounted to about ¥144.4 billion with an average annual growth rate of 17.2 per cent. Within 10 years, China is about to become the world’s second largest market biomaterials medical device market.

TPRI has 5,000 m sq of cleanroom facilities, which include advanced plastic processing machines, laboratory instruments and testing equipment. The facilities have also passed the ISO 13485 certification for quality management in medical devices. It specialises in cardiovascular, anaesthesia and respiration and neurosurgical products. Mr Wang Ming is the Vice-President and Senior Engineer of Tianjin Plastics Research Institute, has accumulated rich experience in the research and development of production of medical plastic products for more than 30 years. He had undertaken 14 ministerial level scientific research projects and has published 10 papers gaining more than 20 invention and utility model patents.

Through the presentation, Mr Wang will bring in-depth discussion on the leading major development future trends such as biomaterials and how the enterprises can enter the supply chain undergoing all these changes.

The 2017 medical plastics conference will feature lots of new materials applications, such as "Innovative High Heat Polycarbonate for Medical Device Manufacturing Industry" by Covestro to manufacturing solutions to best practices of end-user enterprises. KraussMaffei will talk about special cleanroom requirement for injection molding machines, Arburg will inform visitors on applications in the medical industry.