CONFEROS is building c-Medica; will manufacturers come to it? - medical device collaborative web site

Health Industry Today, July, 2001 by John Dalton

A Web site introduced last month that was designed as a collaborative work space to increase the speed to market of medical devices is also said to reduce expenses and enhance revenues for device manufacturers and their suppliers--if they'll use it.

The site's originators--Boston-based CONFEROS, along with "advisory board participants" Dow Plastics and the Medical Device Manufacturers Assn., (MDMA)--said www.c-Medica.com, "provides medical device manufacturers and their suppliers tools to reduce product development time and costs and deliver new devices to market faster."

The Internet platform, said CONFEROS, initially a developer of Web-based design collaboration and project management facilities for the plastics industry, addresses the question of how medical equipment manufacturers and their suppliers can collaboratively and most effectively develop, build and manage products throughout their life-cycle.

What remains to be answered is whether or not device manufacturers and technology and material suppliers will actually make use of the Web site.

"What it comes down to is the whole security and privacy issue that the industry has been concerned with since the Internet first came on the scene," said a health care industry analyst who has advised a number of major device companies on the most efficient use of the Web. "To tell you the truth, the people I work for would probably have to think long and hard before committing anything they felt was--even in the vaguest sense of the word--proprietary and unique to their product development and marketing."

For its part, CONFEROS maintains that security and privacy concerns are a non-issue (see accompanying story, p. 21).

And at best, the new Web site could represent the first concrete instance of the Internet being used by the medical device industry as it was initially perceived--as the perfect tool for the rapid and mutual exchange of product technology and information.

Establishing the need

The medical device market, said CONFEROS, is a $147 billion global market ($61 billion in the U.S.) that is growing at approximately 7% annually.

More than 33,000 medical development projects are initiated each year that are intended to make new and improved medical technologies available to patients and physicians.

But change within the health care industry--such as HMOs and the ongoing cost-cutting measures mandated by the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997--have had a significant impact on the profitability of device marketers.

Consolidation and overseas manufacturing have also increased price competition within the industry.

As a result, said CONFEROS, manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to streamline their operations and lower total costs.

"Medical device development is a complex, regulated process involving coordination of many steps and many participants," said Karen Winkler, medical industry manager for Dow Engineering Plastics. "And manufacturers face a crucial need to bring products to market quickly."

CONFEROS said it understood that new product development is highly fragmented, and that it is often difficult to bring together key players using traditional methods.

It was a point well taken by the plastics industry that the CONFEROS site initially served.

"We (Dow Engineering Plastics) recognized the potential of the Internet to develop efficiencies for medical device manufacturers by connecting them with suppliers earlier in the design process to reduce development time and costs," explained Winkler.

By offering product and technology collaboration within an online environment, said CONFEROS, c-Medica will become an "Internet-enabled product development solution" available to thousands of manufacturers and suppliers that have the need to coordinate new product development activities.

In the past, said CONFEROS, those development activities have been severely limited by traditional methods of information sharing and exchange.

Everybody on the same page

Speed-to-market becomes a critical factor in the success of any new device, maintains CONFEROS, and the economic value of reaching the market first and fastest--along with the penalties for product introduction delayed by traditional development methods--is increasing all the time.

Therefore, said the site's developers, cooperation and collaboration performed early and often among participants becomes paramount.

c-Medica maintains it is the first collaborative data management site developed for the medical device industry.

The site can not only connect medical device manufacturers with suppliers earlier in the design process, its designers said c-Medica can also serve as a single Internet-based source through which to contract with suppliers for any number of products and services.

Because of the highly technical nature of the medical device industry, "Early supplier involvement is one of the key drivers for manufacturers to delivery products to market faster," said Frank Diodato, CONFEROS vice president.

"Suppliers can offer medical device designers the experience and information that can help manufacturers make design decisions faster and, in the end, reduce the early stage specification period and enable a more robust device to be developed."