Around the industry …

Health Industry Today, Dec, 1994

More than 3,500 medical product manufacturing and design professionals attended Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) Minneapolis in October--the region's first medical manufacturing trade show--to survey products and services offered by 246 suppliers. The trade show was the first regional event organized by Canon Communications Inc., manager and producer of the industry's largest national trade shows, MD&M East and MD&M West.

Canon officials believe the show's attendance indicates the industry needs regional events. Eighty-nine percent of the attendees came from upper Midwestern states--Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin. The company's second regional trade show is scheduled for Sept. 20-21 next year in Orlando, Fla., and more than 2,500 are expected to attend. The company expanded the available exhibit hall space at MD&M West 95 Conference and Exposition, set for Jan. 10-12, 1995 at the Anaheim Convention Center. More than 750 companies are expected to exhibit, a 33% increase over the 1994 show, and attendance is projected to exceed 9,000.

Acuson Corp. generated much more interest than it anticipated after the Mountain View, Calif. company produced an ultrasound image featured on a British postage stamp. The ultrasound image of a third-trimester fetal face, captured on Acuson's top-of-the-line Computer Sonography System, is displayed on a first-class postage stamp as part of the Europa series honoring medical discoveries over the past 30 years. Between 22,500 and 30,000 of the stamps, which bear the Queen's insignia, are expected to be sold throughout the United Kingdom, and curiosity seekers have been trying to identify the ferns pictured by Acuson. After the stamp was introduced in October, the company was flooded with phone calls from the British media as reporters tried to identify the ferns in the image. Even The Wall Street Journal jumped into the fray. However, the company is keeping mum about the fetus' identity.

Medical Polymers Technologies Inc., Austin, Texas, developed a consultancy relationship with its Toronto and New York-based advertising agency, Wolf Group. In lieu of cash payment for services in the coming year, Wolf Group agreed to accept a 4-year option to purchase 500,000 shares of common stock, which trades over the counter, at 20% over the June 30 market price. The company believes this arrangement will lower its advertising expenses by more than $300,000 and could result in an equity infusion of $375,000. Medical Polymers Technology officers expect the relationship, and Wolf's equity interest, to result in successful market launches of the company's new products. Medical Polymers Technologies' aim is to develop and commercialize products utilizing its polymer-based technologies.

The U.S. Small Business Administration awarded Chatsworth, Calif.-based Devon Industries Inc. $10 million, the agency's largest reconstruction loan, as a result of the damaged sustained in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. The manufacturer of disposable surgical supplies is based two miles from the quake's epicenter, and a major portion of its headquarters and manufacturing facility was destroyed. The company implemented its emergency contingency plan and shipped product within a week after the quake.

West Haven, Conn.-based Miles Inc. won a $3 million grant from the State Dept. of Economic Development and plans to build a 230,000-square foot office building on a 20-acre site in Orange, Conn. The company has approximately 1,500 employees in Connecticut spread across three sites, and the 700-person office facility will unite Miles into a single West Haven-Orange campus.

Ciba Coming Diagnostic Corp., Walpole, Mass., dedicated a $60 million research, development and manufacturing facility in October. The company expects the facility to enable it to grow its line of ACS:180 automated laboratory testing systems and medical diagnostic tests. The 270,000-square foot expansion increases the facility's area by 216%. The new research and development wing includes 26 laboratories. Ciba Coming built the original facility in 1980, and subsequent expansions in 1988 and 1991 cost $8 million.

SteriGenics International, Freemont, Calif., sold its Aerosol Products Division to Applied Laboratories Inc., Columbus, Ind., so the company could continue expanding its sterilization business. SteriGenics opened the industry's largest contract sterilization facilities this year, in Charlotte, N.C. and Corona, Calif. (See HIT, August 1994, p. 4.) SteriGenics has six sterilization facilities around the country.

The Woodlands, Texas-based LifeCell Corp. began a collaborative research program with the Orthopedic Research Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Long Beach, Calif., to conduct preclinical evaluations of orthopedic tissue processed with the company's universal tissue engineering technology. The research will focus on testing three tissue types found in the knee. The goal of the collaboration is to refine the technology and surgical techniques involved in tissue transplantation procedures used in orthopedic and reconstructive knee surgery.