From the Editor — What Changes Will 2015 Bring?

Beth G. Sisk, Editor

As of this writing, the midterm election was just held and, as you know, Republicans took control of the Senate while keeping control of the House of Representatives. The United States Supreme Court announced on November 7 that it will hear yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—King v. Burwell, which targets the federal subsidies used by millions of people to buy health insurance. The case will be decided by June, they say. What this all means for the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans sought to repeal dozens of times, and for the 2.3% medical device excise tax helping to fund it, remains to be seen. An article on page 14 discusses the effect this tax has had on venture funding and the changing marketplace.

At the Create the Future Design Contest Awards Dinner, Yunus Alapan, the Medical Category winner from Case Western Reserve University, accepted the award on behalf of his HemeChip team.

At Tech Briefs Media Group, we are gearing up to bring you even more of the products and events that you have told us you enjoy. Look for even more webinars, tech talks, e-newsletters, and white papers. Our popular Tech Briefs TV channel ( www.techbriefs.tv ) now features more than 1,200 videos of engineering innovations.

Our highly successful Create the Future Design Contest, which recognizes innovation in product design, for the first time in its 12-year history, had more than 1,000 submissions from 61 countries. In November, an awards banquet was held for the winners. All of the entries, along with the winners, can be seen at www.createthefuturecontest.com . The new contest will launch in March.

This year, Medical Design Briefs featured 12 outstanding Products of the Month. See page 47 for details on how you can vote for the product that you feel was the most significant new product introduced to the engineering community. The product(s) with the most votes will be named Medical Design Briefs’ Readers’ Choice Product of the Year.

Next year, we will be expanding our very popular “Technology Leaders” section spotlighting leading industry experts in that month’s topic. We will have nine “Technology Leaders” issues in 2015 covering: Electrical Connectors/Wires/ Cables;Tubing/Extrusion;Materials/Coatings/Adhesives; Disposables/Single-Use Devices; Motors & Motion Control; Test & Quality Control; Electronics; Outsourcing; and Gas/Fluid Handling/Pumps.

I look forward to continue bringing you a top-quality magazine featuring the latest advances in materials, technology, and regulatory issues facing medical design engineers. Feel free to reach out to me any time with ideas for articles.