09.13.10
Potomac Photonics Demonstrates Feasibility of Wireless Sensor
Potomac Photonics has completed a National Science Foundation (NSF) Phase I Small Business Innovation Research contract related to energy storage, electrical distribution, and packaging for wireless sensor networks. The company’s work targeted the development of integration, packaging, and power technology for the miniaturization of wireless sensor nodes.
The contract called for Potomac’s engineers to reduce the volume of current state-of-art wireless sensor packages by a factor of ten. Potomac developed new embedded-component 3-D packaging techniques and incorporated an advanced battery from Silver Spring, Md.-based FlexEl LLC to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing sugar-cube sized sensing nodes with high-density energy storage.
This technology is capable of producing nodes of almost arbitrary shape, and could revolutionize the manner in which wireless sensors are manufactured, according to a news release from Potomac. The company plans to work with sensing systems developers to incorporate the new technology in future designs. By addressing critical needs such as size reduction, shape customization, and time to market, Potomac’s processes could play a significant role in the development of next-generation wireless sensors for various applications, ranging from home healthcare to the monitoring of aging bridges, pipelines, and aircraft, executives claim.
“We’re very pleased by the Phase I results and encouraged by the support we’ve received from NSF,” said C. Paul Christensen, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and founder of Potomac Photonics. “We look forward to kicking off the next Phase and commercializing this technology.”
Based in Lanham, Md., Potomac Photonics is credited with inventing and manufacturing the waveguide Excimer laser (also referred to as an exciplex laser), a form of ultraviolet laser that commonly is used in eye surgery and semiconductor manufacturing.
ATW Cos. to Establish East Coast Injection Molding Facility
ATW Companies, a manufacturer of custom metal components, is opening a new plant in East Providence, R.I., that will serve as the headquarters for its subsidiary, Parmatech-Proform Corporation.
The official opening of the 25,000-square-foot facility is scheduled for late October. The company will create 20 new jobs in the first 90 days after the facility opens, and up to 100 new positions in the next few years, executives said.
“We are excited to open Proform’s new East Providence facility, where we will showcase our technical metal injection molding expertise,” Peter C. Frost, ATW Companies president, said in a prepared statement. “Metal injection molding has established itself as a mainstream metal fabrication technique, and the existence of two separate facilities offers significantly enhanced logistical, security and redundancy benefits. It also places us closer to customers and markets.”
Petaluma, Calif.-based Parmatech’s parent, ATW Companies, bought Proform last year to add to its metal injection molding (MIM) capabilities. The company manufactures MIMs and products for the medical, telecommunications, firearms, hand tools, semiconductor and electronic packaging markets.
ATW continued its shopping spree last fall, purchasing (through Parmatech-Proform) the MIM business of Morgan Technical Ceramics, a division of The Morgan Crucible Company plc, a United Kingdom-based advanced materials company that specializes in the design, manufacture and marketing of ceramic and carbon products. Morgan Technical Ceramics makes ceramic components, assemblies and related products for niche applications in various markets.
Executives with both Parmatech-Proform and Morgan Technical Ceramics said the acquisition would enable Parmatech to grow its business on the East Coast as well as expand its production capabilities and improve product quality.
Besides owning Parmatech-Proform, ATW Companies also is the parent company of A. T. Wall Company, a Warwick, R.I.-based manufacturer of metal tubing and fabricated metal components; and Judson A. Smith Company, a Boyertown, Pa.-based firm that specializes in tube and laser fabrication, and machining.
Headquartered in Warwick, R.I., ATW Companies provides tubing, stamping, machining and MIM capabilities and expertise to clients in various industries.
Vesta Ends Growth Spate Doubleheader
Vesta Inc. has had quite a busy year.
Last spring, the contract manufacturer acquired ExtruMed LLC, a Placentia, Calif.-based maker of precision thermoplastic tubing for diagnostic and therapeutic devices and procedures. Several months later, in August 2009, company executives announced the start of an expansion project at the firm’s Franklin, Wis., manufacturing plant. The expansion was necessary, executives explained, to ensure the company can “support business growth requirements for the foreseeable future.”
Vesta should be set now for quite some time. The company has added 50,000 square feet of manufacturing and assembly space at its headquarters plant (in Wisconsin), doubling the manufacturing space there. The additional space will support several service line expansions, including Vesta Innovations, a new service that provides early-stage product development to medical device OEMs. The Center offers customers design for manufacturability assistance, final packaging lines, and enhanced molding, extrusion and assembly areas that incorporate Lean and cellular philosophies, according to executives.
In acquiring ExtruMed, Vesta inherited five production facilities with the capacity to produce more than 60 million device components annually. Over the past year, Vesta consolidated the thermoplastic extrusion facilities in Placentia and Temecula, Calif., into a new plant in Corona, Calif. The plant in Corona now offers PEEK (polyetheretherketone) extrusion capabilities, balloon blowing services, and braiding for thermoplastic extrusions, according to a news release about the consolidation.
Interface Catheter Receives Patent
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded a patent to Interface Catheter Solutions for its balloon catheter folding/wrapping devices.
The patent (No. US 7,762,804) covers equipment and processes that use arms and blades to create multiple folds in a balloon catheter, according to a news release from the Laguna Niguel, Calif.-based company. Precise radial movement of temperature-controlled blades speeds up, simplifies and improves the balloon folding and wrapping process, the company claims. The balloon can be folded with high consistency and uniformity, while the flutter and wrapper provides a minimal profile wrapped balloon for catheter manufacturing. Depending on the fluting model selected, the balloon can be folded intothree, four, five, six or eight flutes. The balloon wrapping method is similar, where the blades wrap a folded balloon around a catheter shaft to minimize the diameter of the balloon catheter. The compact fixtures have different lengths of folding blades that accommodate balloons from 1 cm to 14 cm long (models are available up to 25 cm long).
“The patent allows us to continue to innovate and deliver the most reliable solutions to customers,” said Gary Curtis, Interface CEO.
Interface Catheter has created more than 2,000 balloon designs. The company describes itself as a vertically integrated provider of outsourced solutions for balloon catheter manufacturing. It operates multiple Class 7 10,000 and Class 8 100,000 clean rooms in three facilities.
Pacific Plastics Opens New Clean Room
Growing customer demand has prompted contract manufacturer and injection molder Pacific Plastics & Engineering to add a seventh clean room to its manufacturing plant in California.
The Class 7 10,000 clean room will be used to assemble medical devices in sinuplasty operations, vein harvesting and other minimally invasive surgical procedures, CEO Stephanie Harkness told Plasticsnews.com. The clean room—completed late last month—will be used exclusively for assembly, Harkness added.
The Soquel, Calif.-based company’s other Class 7 10,000 clean room, built in 2005, handles medical molding using six Toshiba all-electric molding machines, ranging from 85-110 tons in clamping force. The other five clean rooms at the firm’s 21,000-square-foot manufacturing plant are Class 8 100,000 rooms that have 14 hydraulic molding machines ranging in size from 28-130 tons.
The privately owned, 21-year-old company works with startup firms and larger healthcare companies such as Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson.
“We incubate start-ups and work with early stage companies that are in the stealth mode using new technologies,” Harkness told Plasticsnews.com. “These startups want a local partner because they are moving at warp speed and don’t want to invest in that infrastructure. Our customers own the intellectual property. We produce to their specifications.”
Pacific Plastics makes products for the cardiovascular, orthopedic, gastrointestinal and neuromuscular markets. It also manufactures devices used in pain management, diabetic care, women’s health, sinus care, wound care, drug delivery and diagnostics.
PearlDiver Creates Medical Information Website Five numbers.
That is all it takes to unleash an avalanche of data about Warsaw Health System LLC-Kosciusko Community Hospital in Warsaw, Ind. Data such as the average Medicare charge ($17,655) and average Medicare reimbursement ($5,119) as well as the top 10 Medicare procedures performed there (total knee arthroscopy, partial hip replacement and hip resurfacing are among the more popular surgeries).
Such data are just a fraction of the free pieces of information that can be found on a new website, www.pearldiverinc.com. The site was launched by Fort Wayne, Ind.-based PearlDiver Technologies Inc., which provides data and analysis to medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers.
The data is based on 1.1 billion Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant patient records and includes information on more than 6,000 healthcare providers. PearlDiver executives hope the site will act as a resource that helps patients, device manufacturers and healthcare providers cost-effectively resolve their medical problems.
“We really think that, in general in the United States, we are entering a new era of healthcare where information is going to be more important than in the past. Where payers are trying to push decision-making down to the patient level,” PearlDiver CEO Robin R. Young told Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. “Manufacturers are also being asked by regulators to justify the cost of their products within the context of patient outcomes. And hospitals need a lot of data to become more cost-effective without reducing care levels. It’s a delicate balance, and so hospitals are looking for more performance data, outcome data, that sort of thing.”
PearlDiver’s database is the nation’s largest, according to Young. Its size, he noted, allows the company to aggregate a wide variety of information in five areas on the site:
• Hospital Lookup provides visitors with key procedural, revenue and other data for more than 6,000 healthcare providers;
• Procedure Lookup provides information about medical procedures and diagnoses by specific medical codes;
• Data Guys Market Research provides detailed information on PearlDiver’s market reports, both standard and custom;
• Consumers Choice Health Savings Tool (not yet available) will enable users to compare the cost of any procedure performed at U.S. hospitals or clinics, which essentially will give prospective patients the opportunity to shop for services. The tool also will allow people to compare health care providers based on about 50 measurements of quality, including infection and mortality rates, wait times in hospital emergency rooms and patient ratings. As of press time, the tool was being readied for a launch this month.
• Sales Territory (not yet available) will be an interface that gives salespeople calling on health care providers information to help them better understand a provider’s buying habits. This paid feature is expected to be available in January 2011.
Visitors to the website can access information contained in the database by entering the name of a hospital, a zip code, a procedure or a specific billing code.
Young said the inspiration for the website came from his quarter century of experience as an analyst. “I was an analyst for 25 years. My job was to find data and try to turn that data into something useful for my employer or my customer,” he explained. “After 25 years I got pretty good at finding pockets of data, but I realized there was a big need for cleaned-up data in a master database. Normally I’d find myself going to the FDA for data, or Medicare for data—I’d go to 10 different places. [I thought] why can’t we aggregate all this [data] and clean it up?
PearlDiver currently is considering offering customized health savings tools to companies that would pay a small fee for the service. Other health savings information would remain free to the general public.
Formed in late 2006, PearlDiver provides data and analyses to medical device manufacturers. The company has offices in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Philadelphia, Pa.
Advanced Scientifics Completes Expansion
The growth spurts continue at Advanced Scientifics Inc.
The Millersburg, Pa.-based contract manufacturer has added 5,000 square feet of clean room space and 10,000 feet of warehouse space to its main facility. Advanced Scientifics executives did not disclose the cost of the project.
The expansion increases the company’s total clean room space to 25,000 square feet. Executives said the additional space will be used for product development and production.
Advanced Scientifics manufactures Class I and Class II disposable fluid management devices. It operates a 33,000-square-foot facility in Matamoros, Mexico (near the Texas border) that has a 10,000 square-foot Class 7 clean room. The plant is ISO 13485-certified and registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Potomac Photonics has completed a National Science Foundation (NSF) Phase I Small Business Innovation Research contract related to energy storage, electrical distribution, and packaging for wireless sensor networks. The company’s work targeted the development of integration, packaging, and power technology for the miniaturization of wireless sensor nodes.
The contract called for Potomac’s engineers to reduce the volume of current state-of-art wireless sensor packages by a factor of ten. Potomac developed new embedded-component 3-D packaging techniques and incorporated an advanced battery from Silver Spring, Md.-based FlexEl LLC to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing sugar-cube sized sensing nodes with high-density energy storage.
This technology is capable of producing nodes of almost arbitrary shape, and could revolutionize the manner in which wireless sensors are manufactured, according to a news release from Potomac. The company plans to work with sensing systems developers to incorporate the new technology in future designs. By addressing critical needs such as size reduction, shape customization, and time to market, Potomac’s processes could play a significant role in the development of next-generation wireless sensors for various applications, ranging from home healthcare to the monitoring of aging bridges, pipelines, and aircraft, executives claim.
“We’re very pleased by the Phase I results and encouraged by the support we’ve received from NSF,” said C. Paul Christensen, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and founder of Potomac Photonics. “We look forward to kicking off the next Phase and commercializing this technology.”
Based in Lanham, Md., Potomac Photonics is credited with inventing and manufacturing the waveguide Excimer laser (also referred to as an exciplex laser), a form of ultraviolet laser that commonly is used in eye surgery and semiconductor manufacturing.
ATW Cos. to Establish East Coast Injection Molding Facility
ATW Companies, a manufacturer of custom metal components, is opening a new plant in East Providence, R.I., that will serve as the headquarters for its subsidiary, Parmatech-Proform Corporation.
The official opening of the 25,000-square-foot facility is scheduled for late October. The company will create 20 new jobs in the first 90 days after the facility opens, and up to 100 new positions in the next few years, executives said.
“We are excited to open Proform’s new East Providence facility, where we will showcase our technical metal injection molding expertise,” Peter C. Frost, ATW Companies president, said in a prepared statement. “Metal injection molding has established itself as a mainstream metal fabrication technique, and the existence of two separate facilities offers significantly enhanced logistical, security and redundancy benefits. It also places us closer to customers and markets.”
Petaluma, Calif.-based Parmatech’s parent, ATW Companies, bought Proform last year to add to its metal injection molding (MIM) capabilities. The company manufactures MIMs and products for the medical, telecommunications, firearms, hand tools, semiconductor and electronic packaging markets.
ATW continued its shopping spree last fall, purchasing (through Parmatech-Proform) the MIM business of Morgan Technical Ceramics, a division of The Morgan Crucible Company plc, a United Kingdom-based advanced materials company that specializes in the design, manufacture and marketing of ceramic and carbon products. Morgan Technical Ceramics makes ceramic components, assemblies and related products for niche applications in various markets.
Executives with both Parmatech-Proform and Morgan Technical Ceramics said the acquisition would enable Parmatech to grow its business on the East Coast as well as expand its production capabilities and improve product quality.
Besides owning Parmatech-Proform, ATW Companies also is the parent company of A. T. Wall Company, a Warwick, R.I.-based manufacturer of metal tubing and fabricated metal components; and Judson A. Smith Company, a Boyertown, Pa.-based firm that specializes in tube and laser fabrication, and machining.
Headquartered in Warwick, R.I., ATW Companies provides tubing, stamping, machining and MIM capabilities and expertise to clients in various industries.
Vesta Ends Growth Spate Doubleheader
Vesta Inc. has had quite a busy year.
Last spring, the contract manufacturer acquired ExtruMed LLC, a Placentia, Calif.-based maker of precision thermoplastic tubing for diagnostic and therapeutic devices and procedures. Several months later, in August 2009, company executives announced the start of an expansion project at the firm’s Franklin, Wis., manufacturing plant. The expansion was necessary, executives explained, to ensure the company can “support business growth requirements for the foreseeable future.”
Vesta should be set now for quite some time. The company has added 50,000 square feet of manufacturing and assembly space at its headquarters plant (in Wisconsin), doubling the manufacturing space there. The additional space will support several service line expansions, including Vesta Innovations, a new service that provides early-stage product development to medical device OEMs. The Center offers customers design for manufacturability assistance, final packaging lines, and enhanced molding, extrusion and assembly areas that incorporate Lean and cellular philosophies, according to executives.
In acquiring ExtruMed, Vesta inherited five production facilities with the capacity to produce more than 60 million device components annually. Over the past year, Vesta consolidated the thermoplastic extrusion facilities in Placentia and Temecula, Calif., into a new plant in Corona, Calif. The plant in Corona now offers PEEK (polyetheretherketone) extrusion capabilities, balloon blowing services, and braiding for thermoplastic extrusions, according to a news release about the consolidation.
Interface Catheter Receives Patent
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded a patent to Interface Catheter Solutions for its balloon catheter folding/wrapping devices.
The patent (No. US 7,762,804) covers equipment and processes that use arms and blades to create multiple folds in a balloon catheter, according to a news release from the Laguna Niguel, Calif.-based company. Precise radial movement of temperature-controlled blades speeds up, simplifies and improves the balloon folding and wrapping process, the company claims. The balloon can be folded with high consistency and uniformity, while the flutter and wrapper provides a minimal profile wrapped balloon for catheter manufacturing. Depending on the fluting model selected, the balloon can be folded intothree, four, five, six or eight flutes. The balloon wrapping method is similar, where the blades wrap a folded balloon around a catheter shaft to minimize the diameter of the balloon catheter. The compact fixtures have different lengths of folding blades that accommodate balloons from 1 cm to 14 cm long (models are available up to 25 cm long).
“The patent allows us to continue to innovate and deliver the most reliable solutions to customers,” said Gary Curtis, Interface CEO.
Interface Catheter has created more than 2,000 balloon designs. The company describes itself as a vertically integrated provider of outsourced solutions for balloon catheter manufacturing. It operates multiple Class 7 10,000 and Class 8 100,000 clean rooms in three facilities.
Pacific Plastics Opens New Clean Room
Growing customer demand has prompted contract manufacturer and injection molder Pacific Plastics & Engineering to add a seventh clean room to its manufacturing plant in California.
The Class 7 10,000 clean room will be used to assemble medical devices in sinuplasty operations, vein harvesting and other minimally invasive surgical procedures, CEO Stephanie Harkness told Plasticsnews.com. The clean room—completed late last month—will be used exclusively for assembly, Harkness added.
The Soquel, Calif.-based company’s other Class 7 10,000 clean room, built in 2005, handles medical molding using six Toshiba all-electric molding machines, ranging from 85-110 tons in clamping force. The other five clean rooms at the firm’s 21,000-square-foot manufacturing plant are Class 8 100,000 rooms that have 14 hydraulic molding machines ranging in size from 28-130 tons.
The privately owned, 21-year-old company works with startup firms and larger healthcare companies such as Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson.
“We incubate start-ups and work with early stage companies that are in the stealth mode using new technologies,” Harkness told Plasticsnews.com. “These startups want a local partner because they are moving at warp speed and don’t want to invest in that infrastructure. Our customers own the intellectual property. We produce to their specifications.”
Pacific Plastics makes products for the cardiovascular, orthopedic, gastrointestinal and neuromuscular markets. It also manufactures devices used in pain management, diabetic care, women’s health, sinus care, wound care, drug delivery and diagnostics.
PearlDiver Creates Medical Information Website Five numbers.
That is all it takes to unleash an avalanche of data about Warsaw Health System LLC-Kosciusko Community Hospital in Warsaw, Ind. Data such as the average Medicare charge ($17,655) and average Medicare reimbursement ($5,119) as well as the top 10 Medicare procedures performed there (total knee arthroscopy, partial hip replacement and hip resurfacing are among the more popular surgeries).
Such data are just a fraction of the free pieces of information that can be found on a new website, www.pearldiverinc.com. The site was launched by Fort Wayne, Ind.-based PearlDiver Technologies Inc., which provides data and analysis to medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers.
The data is based on 1.1 billion Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant patient records and includes information on more than 6,000 healthcare providers. PearlDiver executives hope the site will act as a resource that helps patients, device manufacturers and healthcare providers cost-effectively resolve their medical problems.
“We really think that, in general in the United States, we are entering a new era of healthcare where information is going to be more important than in the past. Where payers are trying to push decision-making down to the patient level,” PearlDiver CEO Robin R. Young told Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. “Manufacturers are also being asked by regulators to justify the cost of their products within the context of patient outcomes. And hospitals need a lot of data to become more cost-effective without reducing care levels. It’s a delicate balance, and so hospitals are looking for more performance data, outcome data, that sort of thing.”
PearlDiver’s database is the nation’s largest, according to Young. Its size, he noted, allows the company to aggregate a wide variety of information in five areas on the site:
• Hospital Lookup provides visitors with key procedural, revenue and other data for more than 6,000 healthcare providers;
• Procedure Lookup provides information about medical procedures and diagnoses by specific medical codes;
• Data Guys Market Research provides detailed information on PearlDiver’s market reports, both standard and custom;
• Consumers Choice Health Savings Tool (not yet available) will enable users to compare the cost of any procedure performed at U.S. hospitals or clinics, which essentially will give prospective patients the opportunity to shop for services. The tool also will allow people to compare health care providers based on about 50 measurements of quality, including infection and mortality rates, wait times in hospital emergency rooms and patient ratings. As of press time, the tool was being readied for a launch this month.
• Sales Territory (not yet available) will be an interface that gives salespeople calling on health care providers information to help them better understand a provider’s buying habits. This paid feature is expected to be available in January 2011.
Visitors to the website can access information contained in the database by entering the name of a hospital, a zip code, a procedure or a specific billing code.
Young said the inspiration for the website came from his quarter century of experience as an analyst. “I was an analyst for 25 years. My job was to find data and try to turn that data into something useful for my employer or my customer,” he explained. “After 25 years I got pretty good at finding pockets of data, but I realized there was a big need for cleaned-up data in a master database. Normally I’d find myself going to the FDA for data, or Medicare for data—I’d go to 10 different places. [I thought] why can’t we aggregate all this [data] and clean it up?
PearlDiver currently is considering offering customized health savings tools to companies that would pay a small fee for the service. Other health savings information would remain free to the general public.
Formed in late 2006, PearlDiver provides data and analyses to medical device manufacturers. The company has offices in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Philadelphia, Pa.
Advanced Scientifics Completes Expansion
The growth spurts continue at Advanced Scientifics Inc.
The Millersburg, Pa.-based contract manufacturer has added 5,000 square feet of clean room space and 10,000 feet of warehouse space to its main facility. Advanced Scientifics executives did not disclose the cost of the project.
The expansion increases the company’s total clean room space to 25,000 square feet. Executives said the additional space will be used for product development and production.
Advanced Scientifics manufactures Class I and Class II disposable fluid management devices. It operates a 33,000-square-foot facility in Matamoros, Mexico (near the Texas border) that has a 10,000 square-foot Class 7 clean room. The plant is ISO 13485-certified and registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.