Elastomers face new challenges in medical

SCHAUMBURG, Ill.—Developments for elastomers in the health care market will be driven by large original equipment manufacturers investing in wearable medical devices, according to Marie Crane, health care market leader for DuPont.

Crane covered the changes in the elastomers market for health care in her presentation "Connected Healthcare Transformation" at the Healthcare Elastomer Conference in Schaumburg, Ill.

The global medical device market is growing at 5 percent year over year, with a projected value of $674 billion by 2022, according to BCC Research results from 2018, Crane said. Broken down by region, the U.S. accounts for 45 percent of that market, with 25 percent in Europe, 10 percent in Japan and 8 percent in the Asia-Pacific region.

Crane said the U.S. market has contracted somewhat as customers are starting to go to the Asian market, but those percentages could change depending on the situation with tariffs.

As technology advances, consumers have a greater access to health care, which in turn drives global expansion and mergers and acquisitions activity for companies providing those products, Crane said.

"OEMs are consolidating because of pressures of expenses and their ability to get reimbursement," Crane said. "Today, what OEMs are doing is trying to have a bigger suite of offerings at the hospital."

That market activity has allowed larger companies to bring advantages when negotiating with health care providers, and made the market more competitive for smaller companies to find leverage, she said. In order to win in that market, companies must be able to demonstrate that products add value, reduce hospital stays and trips, improve health and make patients more independent.

"If you're going to develop a new product and be successful, even as a small company, you've got to achieve one of those. It's very important if you're going to be successful in this market," Crane said. "That is why everyone is talking about wearables."

The biggest application draw for the wearable market continues to be fitness and activity trackers, she said. While devices such as wearable ECG monitors have been around for many years, developers are trying to make them easier to use, more patient-friendly and higher-tech to find new ways to catch the attention of the health care market.

The biggest growing trend seen in the market now is in glucose monitoring for diabetic patients, both in dealing with pumps and monitoring devices to improve quality of life, she said. Pregnancy is another developing part of the market, to use wearable technology so a patient "can hear and monitor the fetus as it's growing within your body. It's peace of mind for the mom and it's also the ability to understand what's happening with your baby as it's growing inside you."

Monitoring sleep is another popular application, especially for sleep apnea, Crane said. While patients generally have to visit a clinic for a sleep study, technology is being developed to study sleep at home. Wearable textiles, usually for use in fitness settings, are also gaining ground, as well as therapeutic pain management technology.

Going forward, smart patches will make up a large part of the wearable medical device market, Crane said. The overall wearable device market will be worth $27.6 billion by 2021. Smart patches will make up more than 30 percent of the wearable technology market by 2020.

"If you wear a device like a Fitbit tracker or something, it moves," she said. "If it moves on your body, you get a little distortion of the signal. So patches are becoming important for true critical monitoring devices because they prevent that noise that can happen if that device moves around."

Transdermal transmission patches, with applications such as drug delivery, diabetes and cosmetics, will make up 47 percent of the smart patch market by 2020, she said. While there's a market for injectable pens for some types of pharmaceuticals, patients can still have a phobia of needles.

"If you look at the convenience of having a patch versus having to carry around a pen, that makes a big deal," she said.

Monitoring patches for fitness, health care and diabetes, will provide 33 percent of that market, and electronic stimulation for fitness, wellness and chronic pain treatment will cover 20 percent.

Part of what makes the health care market different for elastomers is the type of customer claiming the market, Crane said. Large OEMs such as Alphabet Inc. (Google) are making big investments, such as the 60 start-up companies it acquired by 2009 in the health care market. Microsoft and Apple also have made transformations to try to take technology they already had in the electronics space and improving what they can do in health care.

Tiered suppliers such as Flexcon Co. Inc. and Jabil Inc., while traditionally focused in other markets, have been investing in design work and contract manufacturing work for OEMs in the health care market, she said. Beyond those are many smaller start-up companies.

The new technology approaches and market action make new challenges for elastomers, Crane said. One major challenge is the incorporation of sensors, LEDs and batteries. That means dealing with issues like maintaining temperature for lithium batteries. In traditional electronics, manufacturers could protect batteries through potting or capsuling.

"But what the market's trying to tell us is if we're really going to be successful, we've got to look at how we can take the traditional way of building an electronic, and use injection molding," Crane said. "Because believe it or not, potting and capsuling capabilities are very similar functional capabilities to what a traditional elastomer does."

In particular, it can mean lower temperature processing, which is necessary to be able to work with components with liquid injection molding, she said.

"You've got to have a lower temperature, and also be able to have a decent cycle time," Crane said. "It's very important, that's a big challenge that we have to look for."

Another reason LSRs are very important to the medical device health care market is what Crane called "damping," or protecting the components from impacts and everyday use. The device needs to be able to withstand both those bumps and continue to provide a service.

"So if you drop something, it needs to still work. That LED light, that sensor still needs to be working," she said. "The needs of our technology are changing."

Another challenge for elastomers in the health care market is conformability, Crane said. Depending on where the device goes, it needs to be able to bend, flex and stay in contact with the skin.

"Most of all, it should be non-irritating. If it's going to go on your body over and over, the last thing you want is a red mark where you're scratching," she said.

If the device isn't comfortable for the patient to use and conform to the patient's body and needs, it won't be successful in treating them, she said.

"They're not going to use it. The whole purpose of doing all these things in a wearables space is to make it so patients actually follow the doctors' orders, right?" she said. "If we don't make it comfortable, they're not going to use it, so you might as well throw away the device."