Medical Equipment Parts Manufacturing: Sectors, Processes & Technologies

           Medical equipment industry covers instruments, implants and equipment for diagnostics, monitoring, therapeutics. These include surgical instruments, implantable monitors for diabetic and cardiac care and knee replacements and hip implants and other reconstructive devices. A medical equipment manufacturer may cater to all these sectors or may limit their activities to one or more medical industry sectors. For any machine shop, medical equipment parts manufacturing is challenging on many counts. All instruments manufactured for the industry must meet the strict specifications laid out for that piece or group of equipment. Medical parts manufacturing also very commonly involve high degree of custom and precision machining, product development for metal parts, prototyping & testing and a good deal of micromachining and micromanufacturing. For this reason, clients will only team up with machine shops and medical instrument makers who already have proven capabilities in medical device manufacturing.

Industry Sectors

Surgical Instruments; This is one of the largest sectors in the medical equipment industry. Surgical robotics, sutures, dilators are among the most common equipment manufactured by a surgical instrument manufacturer. Key technologies for a surgical instrument manufacturer include surface treatments, micromachining and materials.

Orthopedics; This is another major sector and many a medical instrument maker will specialize in devices such as arthroscopy, spinal implants, knee replacements and hip implants, orthobiologicals and other reconstructive devices. Processes such as casting, grinding, machining, rapid manufacturing, metal injection molding and polishing are central to this sector.

Dental Instruments; This is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry with accelerating demands for drills, implants, imaging equipment and other instruments. 3D imaging, additive manufacturing and machining are some of the key technologies used in this sector.

Cardiovascular Devices; This sector includes drug sents, defibrillators and pacemakers and the key manufacturing processes include assembly, micromolding and power sources.

Diagnostic Apparatus; Examples of this sector include magnetic and ultrasound resonance instruments, endoscopic devices, etc. A highly competitive sector, the key technologies involved here are micromanufacturing, IT and imaging.

Apart from the above, there are also other important sectors in the medical device industry and they include diabetes devices, internal fixation devices, blood transfusion equipment, urology devices, neuromodulation devices and more.

Processes & Technologies

The highly regulated environment as well as the constantly evolving character of the medical equipment industry means that the medical equipment manufacturer, in order to maintain his competitive edge, must be familiar with the most up-to-date technologies, processes and methods relevant to his field of specialty. Some of the key processes and technologies involved in medical equipment manufacturing include 3D imaging, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, measurement & inspection, quality systems, surface & coating treatments, micromanufacturing, laser and assembly. For biocompatibility reasons, materials also present some unique challenges to the medical instrument maker.