INDUSTRY FEATURE
VERYAN MEDICAL
Veryan Medical has developed a highly innovative vascular biomimetic stent technology (BioMimics 3D) for use in the large arteries of the leg. The company is headquartered near London but all of the R&D has been conducted from the company’s facility in Galway, where more than 90 per cent of the company’s staff are based. Veryan successfully conducted a randomised study of the BioMimics 3D stent, which showed that the device has significant clinical benefits over its competitors. As a consequence the device received CE marking in 2012.
Veryan Medical’s BioMimics 3D
3D4MEDICAL
3D4Medical specialises in developing educational health, fitness and medical apps for professional reference and student training. Its apps have revolutionised the teaching and learning of anatomy, physiology and exercise by enabling users to navigate 360° views of the human body. 3D4Medical’s apps have been downloaded more than 8.5 million times and Apple’s Vice President, Michael Tchao, described Heart Pro as “one of the best apps ever”.
These factors could drive sales but need to be exploited, says John Shiel, Senior Development Advisor for Enterprise Ireland with particular responsibility for medtech: “Last year the life sciences sector returned 13 per cent growth in exports and five per cent growth in employment. That’s pretty good and we’re quite pleased but we need to sustain and improve impetus and we need to sell more. “Our job is to help companies expand on export markets. Our internal market is small so we need to get into new ones, in particular highgrowth markets like BRICS and Sub-Saharan Africa. What we’ve noticed in these markets is the rapidly emerging middle class; they’ve got money to spend and they want top quality healthcare. That’s where we’re trying to position our clients.” Shiel says Enterprise Ireland attends a range of events to facilitate sales and expansion into new markets for the indigenous sector, such as Africa Health and Arab Health trade events. It also organises the Med in Ireland event, Europe’s largest medtech conference, inviting around 300 buyers and decision-makers. Like most sectors, finance and particularly funding for early-stage start-ups is a challenge – the products are expensive by their nature. Underpinning this is the need to develop costeffective products, to maintain operating costs and product pricing and to foster a favourable financial environment. Medtech is an important industry for Ireland and a significant source of employment but it’s also addressing real clinical needs, alleviating the pressure on hospitals and improving patient health. See side panels for some of the Irish medtech success stories.
BioInnovate Fellows 2013
BIOINNOVATE BioInnovate is a specialist medical device innovation fellowship programme at NUIG. Its aim is to address unmet clinical needs with a market opportunity. Fellows spend the first five weeks of training in needs finding and filtering, followed by eight weeks in clinical immersion. They also receive mentorship from industry experts, clinicians, venture capitalists and academics. Two technologies go forward each year to receive grant aid. They are then incubated and accelerated in the university. BioInnovate recruits from a range of backgrounds including medical, technical, business and engineering. Applications are now open for the innovation fellowship 2016/17. www.bioinnovate.ie
3D4 produces educational health, fitness and medical apps
APICA CARDIOVASCULAR
Apica Cardiovascular is a medical device company dedicated to establishing innovative medical devices for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, which are reaching epidemic proportions in several countries. The Apica ASC (access, stabilisation and closure) device facilitates access and closure in heart surgery. The company was acquired by Thoratec last year. Having successfully launched the Apica device the company is continuing to develop products in this area.
26
024 InBusiness Q3 2015_Medtech.indd 26
Dr Mark Bruzzi, Director of BioInnovate Ireland
InBUSINESS | Q3 2015
05/10/2015 11:44