Articles

Where Test Plans Break: Measuring the Performance of Ultra-Miniature Sensors

This article explores common sensor testing methodologies, reveals where test plans often break, and outlines what medical device manufacturers and OEMs must do to ensure their sensors perform as expected to achieve desired patient outcomes and commercial success. Read on!

Six Trends Shaping Motion System Design for Point-of-Care Imaging Applications

Point-of-care imaging is just one example of how motion innovation is shaping the future of medical imaging. While many systems remain centralized in hospitals and imaging centers, advancements in motion technology continue to improve performance, reliability and integration across all imaging environments. Read on to learn more.

Manufacturing: Strategies to Maximize Precision, Yield, and Cost-Efficiency with Photo-Chemical Etching

Read on for practical strategies that consistently improve precision, yield, and unit economics, while also widening the design space — particularly for medical and high-tech applications.

A Material Difference: Engineering Smaller Medical Devices at the Molecular Edge

There’s a quiet revolution happening deep in the anatomy that doesn’t start with robotics or AI-assisted navigation, but with something far more fundamental: materials. The push toward miniaturized medical devices, especially in vascular intervention, isn’t just about making things smaller but also making devices that can be efficacious in the small anatomy. This is the frontier: the convergence of polymer innovation, extrusion engineering and micron-level quality assurance. Read on to learn more.

Designing Continuous Glucose Monitors for Safety, Reliability, and Patient Comfort

Continuous glucose monitors have reshaped diabetes management by delivering real-time glucose readings, freeing patients from frequent finger-stick testing. This article examines how properly selected sensing, protection, and activation components — including miniature magnetic switches and thermistors — help engineers design CGMs that meet demanding performance, safety, and regulatory requirements.

Inside the OEM: Intuitive’s Next Chapter — Scaling Robotics, Data, and Global Reach

For more than 30 years, Intuitive has helped define robotic-assisted surgery. Go inside the OEM to learn more about Intuitive and its next chapter.

From Shortages to Solutions: Engineering Strategies for Supply Stability in Medical Devices

This article explores how engineering and innovation are becoming the primary tools for building a more resilient and reliable medical device supply chain. Read on to learn more.

Improving Device Efficiency with Tunable Lasers

Tunable optical parametric oscillators (OPO) lasers can be tuned to a wide spectrum of specific wavelengths across the UV, visible, and infrared. The laser light can then be directed, or transmitted over fiber, to physically interact with matter by depositing short, intense bursts of energy into a sample. Read on to learn more about them.

Material Choices That Make or Break Manufacturability in Miniaturized Medical Devices

Medical devices are shrinking rapidly while becoming more complex. Sensors, processors, optics, and connectivity are now routinely packed into form factors that would have been impractical just a decade ago. While this miniaturization unlocks new clinical value, it also exposes a persistent design challenge: many of the materials still being specified were developed for an earlier era of electronics. Read on to learn more.

Case Study: RenAM 500Q Powers Mass Production of Medical Components for Permedica

For many years, the medical industry has used additive manufacturing to develop low-volume parts, such as medical prototypes, bespoke implants, and surgical implants and aids. Global engineering technologies company, Renishaw, has collaborated with medical devices specialist, Permedica, to develop AM processes for the mass production of medical components in the healthcare industry. Read on to learn more.

MD&M West

With multiple co-located expos, a dense education schedule, and a show floor spanning the entire medical device lifecycle, success at MD&M West depends less on seeing everything than on seeing the right things. Read on for a guide that takes a tactical view of the event — highlighting role-based education paths, newly emphasized features, and practical strategies for navigating the show efficiently.

From Consensus Oncology to Individualized Biology

While a breakthrough may someday arrive, betting everything on a single answer overlooks what is already within reach. The real opportunity lies at the intersection of biology, technology, artificial intelligence, and drugs working synergistically together, not as isolated components. Read on to learn more.

Why Medical Device Loyalty Depends on Services, Not Features

Product features alone no longer command premium prices or defend against commoditization. The path to differentiation and margin protection now runs through service quality and customer relationships. Read on to learn more.

Faster From Lab to Patient to Win the Race Against Time

This article explores the essential ingredients of pharmaceutical success, from research and design to development, production and ultimately, the patient. Read on to learn more.

Engineering for the Future: The Trends Transforming Medtech in 2026

Success in 2026 will favor organizations that address these shifts directly: designing for interoperability, validating at the individual level, building security to keep pace with threats, and engineering for real-world clinical use. The innovations that define this year will not only improve device capabilities but reshape how healthcare itself is delivered. Read on to learn more.

MD&M West Show Preview

Returning to Anaheim this February, MD&M West 2026 brings the global medical device community together for three days of engineering insight, manufacturing expertise, and technology breakthroughs. As one of the largest gatherings of medtech professionals in North America, the event showcases the full spectrum of product development. Read on to learn all about it.

Inside the OEM: Medtronic’s Growth and Next Wave of Innovation

When Thierry Piéton stepped into the role of executive vice president and chief financial officer of Medtronic earlier this year, he entered one of the largest and most complex organizations in the medical technology industry. Read on to go inside the OEM.

Engineering Compact, Energy-Efficient Electronic Drug-Delivery Pens

The design of electronic drug-delivery pens requires precise control, compact form factors, and exceptionally low power consumption — requirements that can only be met by thoughtful component selection and close collaboration with experienced suppliers. Read on to learn more.

IV Disposables: A Rising Opportunity for Medtech OEMs

For medical-device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the intravenous (IV) disposables market continues to present a fast-expanding frontier — driven by clinical necessity, the increasing burden of chronic disease, heightened infection-control awareness and new care-delivery models. Read on to learn more.

Advances in Polyimide Tubing for Next-Generation Medical Devices

Minimally invasive and interventional platforms increasingly demand smaller profiles, tighter tolerances, and components that maintain performance under thermal, chemical, and mechanical stress. Polyimide (PI) has emerged as a workhorse within these parameters. Read on to learn why.

Built to Adapt: Rethinking Contract Manufacturing for a New Era

In this Q&A, Brian Semcer, president of MICRO, talks to Medical Design Briefs about how the next generation of contract manufacturers is redefining agility, quality, and partnership in the medical device ecosystem. Read now!

Elevating Antimicrobial Coatings to a New Standard: Introducing Surface-Active Systems

There are two main product ranges: Surface-active therapeutics and surface-active materials. Read on to learn more about them.

OEM Toll Processing Advances High-Value Products

Toll processing (or toll manufacturing) involves a manufacturer processing customer-supplied materials or parts for a predetermined fee. The customer retains ownership of the materials, while the toll provider applies specialized technologies, equipment, and expertise to deliver the finished components. Read on to learn more about it.

Mitigating Leak Failures Using Radial Grinding Equipment

The development of the grinding machine was a complex task, requiring ample hours and engineering trials to complete. Read on to learn more about it and what it can do.

Automation: How Custom Motion Control Transforms Medical Equipment Design

In today’s medical equipment market, reliability is not a luxury — it is a necessity. Every adjustment, every movement, and every interaction with the equipment must be performed flawlessly to ensure patient safety, caregiver efficiency, and long-term service life. Behind this design and precision are highly engineered motion control components. Read on to learn more.

Mitigating Biocompatibility Risks from Material and Supplier Changes in Medical Devices

In this Q&A, Audrey Turley, director of lab operations – biosafety at Nelson Laboratories, spoke with Medical Design Briefs about the critical importance of monitoring and managing material changes in medical devices. Read on!

Navigating the Ebb and Flow of the Global Electronics Supply Chain

To better understand both the historical ebb and flow of electronics availability and the outlook for the years ahead, Medical Design Briefs spoke with Ross Valentine, Anal Dharamshi, and Srinivasan Kandaswamy, experts in supply chain and design engineering at Arrow Electronics and its subsidiary eInfochips. Read on for insights that highlight strategies medical OEMs can adopt to balance cost, resilience, and innovation in an increasingly complex supply environment.

Autonomous Surgery: Engineering the Next Generation of Surgical Robots

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently demonstrated the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), completing eight consecutive gallbladder removal procedures on ex vivo tissue without human intervention. Medical Design Briefs spoke with Axel Krieger, PhD, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins and senior author of the study, about the system’s architecture, safeguards, and future applications.

The Promise and Challenge of On-Body Biosensors: A Perspective on Clinical Utility and Commercial Viability in Patient Management

On-body biosensors have crossed the threshold from technological novelty to clinical tool driving medical decisions. The most successful devices share common traits: They provide clinically actionable information, reliably measure rapidly changing biomarkers, account for confounding variables, and utilize established reimbursement pathways. Read on to learn more about them.