Integrated Global Capabilities Offer Faster Paths to Market—A Medtech Makers Q&A

By Sean Fenske, Editor-in-Chief

Medical devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated; as such, manufacturers face pressure to speed up innovation while tackling development, regulatory, and production requirements. Technology solutions for cardiovascular, neurovascular, and robotic surgery require tighter tolerances, specialized materials, and seamless collaboration across the product lifecycle.

As a result, medical device OEMs are leaning more on contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) to eliminate challenging supply chains and logistical concerns during the development and production process. Maintaining a partnership with a single entity that can aid with the full process, from material selection through to the final steps can enhance a product lifecycle’s timeline.

In the following Q&A, Dean Childers, Vice President and General Manager of DuPont Healthcare Solutions, offers insights on the importance of global manufacturing and technical support, the value of aligning development and production teams from the outset, and DuPont’s long-term vision for helping customers scale innovation while advancing patient care worldwide.

Sean Fenske: What are you hearing most from customers when it comes to what they need from a medical device CDMO today?

Dean Childers: The message is consistent wherever we go. Customers want to work with fewer, more capable suppliers, ideally one that can bring materials, component design and development, deep technical expertise, and manufacturing together without requiring them to coordinate across a fragmented supply chain.

Medical devices are getting more complex. Cardiovascular, neurovascular, and robotic surgery—these applications demand tighter tolerances, more advanced materials, and faster timelines. When those pieces are siloed across different vendors, customers spend valuable time managing supplier relationships instead of advancing their technology.

Customers are telling us they want a more connected model, where they are not the ones holding everything together across multiple suppliers. They want a single, capable team that understands their program from materials through manufacturing and can move with them from early development all the way to commercial scale.

That is really what drove how we built DuPont Healthcare Solutions. By bringing DuPont™ Spectrum™ and DuPont™ Liveo™ together, we can offer that kind of integrated capability across polymer materials, silicone science, components, and device manufacturing, all supported by a global footprint with local teams who understand the specific applications and regional requirements our customers are working within.

It comes down to helping our customers focus on what they do best—advancing their technology and improving patient care. We take on the complexity of the development and manufacturing process so they can stay focused on their innovation.

Fenske: How does DuPont Healthcare Solutions bring those capabilities together in a way that is actually meaningful for customers?

Childers: The real value is not just in having the capabilities. It is in how they connect. We are building a model where materials science, component development, and manufacturing are aligned from the start of a program, not introduced to each other at the end.

Through DuPont™ Spectrum™, we support customers across cardiovascular, electrophysiology, structural heart, neurovascular, orthopedics, and robotic surgery applications, helping them solve complex challenges with confidence. The capabilities span extrusion, catheter technologies, injection molding, medical balloons, laser processing, fluid management, and sterile and non-sterile packaging. Our precision metal machining and expanded molding expertise is critical in applications where tight tolerances directly affect device performance and patient safety.

DuPont™ Liveo™ brings deep silicone expertise, delivering high-performance healthcare materials and solutions. From silicone elastomers and fluids to tubing, adhesives, and smart wearables, our portfolio supports medical device, pharmaceutical, and biopharmaceutical applications. We are committed to understanding customer needs, driving innovation, and expanding our global manufacturing capabilities to meet the evolving demands of the healthcare market.

Backed by advanced material characterization, we understand how our materials perform and why that performance matters. This insight is a cornerstone of the Liveo™ brand and a key reason customers trust us for performance where it matters most.

What we hear consistently from customers is that getting us involved early is where the value really shows up. When our engineers are at the table during design, we can identify manufacturability considerations before they become program delays, recommend materials we know will perform at scale, and align development timelines to reflect what is achievable in production.

For customers, that means fewer surprises, better consistency as programs scale, and a more efficient path from development to commercialization so their innovations can reach the patients who need them.

Fenske: Why is alignment among materials, technical expertise, complex solutions, and manufacturing so important, and why has it historically been difficult to achieve?

Childers: This is something many people in medtech have experienced firsthand. Traditionally, materials, design, and manufacturing have operated in silos. A customer selects a material from one supplier, works with a design firm on the device architecture, then hands it off to a contract manufacturer, and somewhere in that chain, something does not translate the way it should.

Maybe the material behaves differently at production volumes. Maybe the design was not optimized for the manufacturing process. Either way, rework happens late in development, when it is most costly and most disruptive to timelines.

DuPont Healthcare Solutions addresses this by bringing those capabilities under one roof and connecting them from the beginning of a program. Our engineers think about manufacturability at the design stage. Material selection is informed by what we know about how those materials will behave in our processes at scale. Development and manufacturing are having the same conversation at the same time, rather than sequentially.

The feedback we get from customers is that this kind of early-stage alignment is genuinely one of the most valuable things we bring to the table. It is not just about having broad capabilities. It is about applying them in a coordinated way that reflects how development actually works in practice.

For customers, it means fewer handoffs, less rework, better predictability as programs scale, and more time for their teams to focus on innovation rather than managing complexity across multiple suppliers.

Fenske: How does DuPont’s global footprint translate into real value for customers who are scaling or expanding into new markets?

Childers: Global scale only matters if it actually shows up for customers when and where they need it. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.

We want to be where our customers are. With manufacturing and development sites across North and Central America, Europe, and Asia, we can support customers regionally, whether they are scaling production closer to a key market, transferring programs in response to supply chain shifts, or navigating the regulatory requirements of a new geography. Those are real operational challenges customers face as they grow, and being able to work alongside them through those transitions is a meaningful part of what we offer.

Just as important is the expertise our teams bring. Having facilities near our customers is only part of it. Our people need to understand regional regulatory expectations, market-specific application requirements, and the operational nuances that affect quality and consistency across different production environments. That combination of infrastructure and expertise is what allows customers to expand with confidence.

From a capabilities standpoint, we support the full product lifecycle globally: engineering and process development, extrusion, injection molding, precision machining, assembly, packaging, and quality systems built for regulated healthcare environments.

What customers are really looking for is a CDMO that can grow with them over time, not one they will need to transition away from as their business scales. That is how we think about our global presence, as a long-term foundation for their growth, not just support for where they are today.

Fenske: What is the bigger-picture vision for DuPont Healthcare Solutions, and what does it mean for customers looking ahead?

Childers: We saw a clear and consistent gap in the market. Medical device OEMs were managing fragmented supplier relationships across materials, components, and manufacturing, and that complexity was slowing programs down and adding risk at a time when healthcare innovation is moving faster than it ever has.

DuPont Healthcare Solutions was purpose-built to address that. By bringing DuPont™ Spectrum™ and DuPont™ Liveo™ together, we have created a connected set of capabilities across materials science, component design, and contract manufacturing that customers can access through a single, integrated team with global reach.

For customers, that changes the dynamic. Instead of spending time and energy coordinating across multiple suppliers, they can direct that focus toward advancing their device technology and improving outcomes for the patients they serve. The development and manufacturing complexity is something we work through with them, not something they manage around us.

This is just the beginning. DuPont is committed to continuing to grow these capabilities, expanding our footprint, deepening our technical expertise, and finding new ways to bring more of the development and manufacturing process together in ways that genuinely reduce complexity for customers.

What drives all of it is advancing patient care. Every device our customers are building is meant to improve someone’s life. When we help them move faster and scale with greater confidence, that innovation reaches patients sooner. That is the mission.

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