News
Plastics in Medical Devices 2010 comes to Cleveland with an Assist from Cleveland MMCC
:: April 7, 2010
After staging three successful “Plastics in Medical Devices” conferences in Brussels, Belgium, since 2006, European Plastics News joined forces with Plastics News to bring the event for the first time to the United States this spring. The Plastics News Global Group event, “Plastics in Medical Devices 2010” is coming to Cleveland, a hotbed of biomedical research, development and investment, April 12-14.
“(Cleveland MMCC Director of Convention Sales) Tony Prusak and other regional organizations reached out to us early in the process, offering us any support we needed to be successful and to consider making this an annual event in Cleveland,” said Robert Grace, Plastics News Editor and Associate Publisher and co-organizer of the conference. “We’re not used to this overwhelming third-party support, we usually have to do it all on our own.”
The event will kick off Monday, April 12, with a pair of concurrent afternoon workshops, “Intro to Plastics Processing for the Medical Market” and “Polymer Considerations in Medical Device Design.” The two-day conference begins the following day and features a full slate of processing, design, materials and regulatory experts from up and down the health-care supply chain, including the Cleveland Clinic, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Battelle, NAMSA, Mack Molding, Atek Plastics, PMC, Frantz Medical, Parker Hannifin, US Endoscopy, Bridge Design, Nypro Healthcare and Ximedica, as well as European representatives from AstraZeneca and Univac.
“Our sister publication, European Plastics News, had hosted the event previously in Brussels and one of the event sponsors had inquired about moving it to the United States,” said Grace. “This is a highly concentrated conference, focusing on plastics in the emerging medical device market. Northeast Ohio was a natural choice as Ohio is the second-largest manufacturer of plastic products in the United States, and 11 of the world’s top 30 medical device manufacturers are based in the Midwestern U.S. Cleveland has become the obvious choice for this event due to the number of Ohio-based plastics manufacturers, the concentration of hospitals and medical companies, and the infrastructure and outpouring of support from the entire medical community, including Cleveland MMCC.”
Why is Cleveland the perfect choice for medical conferences? Click here… to find out.
The event will provide a unique forum for leading pharmaceutical companies and device designers to lay out their requirements for plastics in the medical sector. As a highly focused, plastics-oriented conference, it will bring members of the entire medical-devices supply chain together under the same roof for two days of information sharing and networking.
“A great problem for us right now is making sure we have enough space for this large and diverse group, ranging from CEOs to engineers and designers,” said Grace. “We have everyone in supply chain coming to this conference and have registered more than 150 attendees from around the world, including Germany, India, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark and the U.K. … so far.” You can see a sampling of who’s attending the event here ….
Plastics are critical to the modern pharmaceuticals producer, with drug dosage and delivery becoming ever more dependent on innovative plastics design and manufacturing. End-users are searching for the latest technologies at the most competitive prices without compromising on product safety.
Additionally, as a lot of healthcare treatments shift from the hospital to the home, the need for well-designed, user-friendly dispensing and diagnostic devices has never been higher. Previously simple devices increasingly now incorporate electronic, mechanical and even computerized components. Plastics can serve as an enabling technology, while good design plays just as vital a role.
This conference is designed as the place to meet supply chain partners, to gain the latest insights into what the medical device market needs and to source information on the newest materials, innovative applications, design ideas and regulatory developments. To register for the conference or for more information, visit http://plasticsinmedicaldevices.com or contact Robert Grace in Akron at 330-865-6151 or rgrace@crain.com.
