Features

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.

Product of the Month

See the product of the month: Zeus' expanded PTFE tubing platform engineered to increase flexibility while maintaining structural integrity in demanding catheter applications.

Product Focus: Test and Quality Control

See where the product focus is this month: On test and quality control, including LK Metrology's production-ready computed tomography inspection system optimized for shop-floor deployment; a high-precision interferometric measurement system from Micro-Epsilon; Kistler's expanded in-line process monitoring capabilities for regulated manufacturing environments; and more.

New Products and Services

See the new products and services, including Boker’s new 2026 resource tools to support specification and sourcing of precision metal stampings and non-standard washers; Advanced Thermal Solutions' expanded thermal measurement and analysis tools for quantifying airflow and heat dissipation in compact medical electronics; integrated magnetic field sensor modules for current, angle, and position measurement from Magnetic Sensor Systems; and more.

Vaccines Via Dental Floss

Researchers have developed a novel vaccine delivery approach that uses dental floss to administer vaccines through the junctional epithelium, the thin, permeable tissue located between the teeth and gums. Read on to learn more about it.

Noninvasive Imaging Could Replace Finger Pricks

A noninvasive method for measuring blood glucose uses Raman spectroscopy — a light-based technique that identifies molecular composition by analyzing how near-infrared light scatters within tissue. The shoebox-sized prototype eliminates the need for finger sticks or implanted sensors, offering a potential alternative for people with diabetes who require frequent glucose monitoring. Read on to learn more.

Wireless Contact Lens for Retinal Diagnostics

A team of researchers has developed a next-generation wireless ophthalmic diagnostic technology that replaces the existing stationary, darkroom-based retinal testing method by incorporating an ultrathin OLED into a contact lens. This breakthrough is expected to have applications in diverse fields such as myopia treatment, ocular biosignal analysis, augmented-reality (AR) visual information delivery, and lightbased neurostimulation. Read on to learn more.

New Method Uses Carbon Nanotubes for Health Sensors

Researchers have produced purified single-wall carbon nanotubes that could enable the development of significantly more accurate healthcare sensors. Read on to learn more.

Soft Bioelectronic Tracks Hundreds of Biological Events

Roughly a quarter of a millimeter in diameter, the NeuroString fiber can incorporate hundreds to thousands of independent electronic channels capable of detecting neurochemicals, monitoring muscle contractions, recording single-neuron activity, or delivering targeted stimulation. Read on to learn more.

Dissolvable Battery Uses Probiotics

Inspired by the self-destructing devices depicted in the Mission: Impossible films, researchers are advancing transient electronics designed to safely dissolve after use. Read on to learn more.

From the Editor: Industrial Mastery Comes to Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is entering what the Wohlers Report 2026 calls “The Era of Industrial Mastery.” For the medical device industry, that phrase should resonate. Read on to learn more about what Sherrie Trigg, Editor and Director of Content, thinks about the matter.

Novel Sensor Offers Continuous Blood Leakage Monitoring

In a recent breakthrough, a team of researchers led by Dr. Yei Hwan Jung at Hanyang University, South Korea, has proposed a novel ultrathin flexible sensor inserted endovascularly with a stent to detect Type-I endoleaks with the maximum rupture risk. Read on to learn more.

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.

Video Spotlight on Products and Services

See where the video spotlight is: Micromolding, hybrid laser systems for advanced manufacturing, web converting machines, light-cure conformal coatings, and much more.

From the Editor

In December, we asked Medical Design Briefs’ readers to cast their ballot to choose from our eight Products of the Month the technology they felt was the most significant new introduction to the design engineering community in 2025. This year, our winner reflects the industry’s need to lower costs and minimize material usage. Read on to learn the winner of the 2025 Medical Design Briefs’ Readers’ Choice Products of the Year.

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.

Product of the Month

See the product of the month: SABIC's LNP™ and EXTEM™ thermoplastic resin grades engineered for compact medical components requiring high thermal and electrical performance.

New Products and Services

See the new products and services, including an AI-driven platform for preparing global medtech regulatory submissions from Pure Global; a collaborative commercial strategy platform for biopharma launches from Nmblr; safety syringes and companion reusable autoinjectors from Owen Mumford; and more.

Product Focus: Sensors

See where the product focus is this month: Sensors.

Printable Nanoparticles Enable Mass Produced Biosensors

Engineers have developed a technique for inkjet printing arrays of special nanoparticles that enables the mass production of long-lasting wearable sweat sensors. These sensors could be...

Under-the-Skin Electrode for Epilepsy Tracking

Researchers have demonstrated that seizures can be tracked in the home environment, giving clinicians access to data that could have a dramatic impact on the way in which epilepsy is treated in...

Terahertz Wave Control for Enhanced Biomedical Technology

A spintronic THz emitter with a microscale stripe pattern enables the modulation of chirality during THz wave generation. Unlike traditional THz sources that rely on external optical...