TAKING MEDICAL INNOVATION FROM WOODSTOCK TO THE WORLD

Medical device manufacturer Owen Mumford is making its biggest ever investment in research and development

By Nicky Godding

The Managing Director of Owen Mumford, the Oxfordshire-based international medical device design and manufacturing group, is not a man for complacency.

Under Jarl Severn’s watch, Owen Mumford’s sales have increased by more than three-quarters since he joined as managing director in 2008, and it has opened two facilities in Asia.

Now, and for the next three years or so, Owen Mumford is investing more than eight per cent of its annual turnover, around £21 million, into research and development for new products.

“We design devices that improve the delivery of healthcare and home health treatments for people around the world, and this is the biggest investment we have ever made in new product development,” said Jarl.

The company was established more than 60 years ago. Set up by John Mumford and Ivan Owen with his father Thomas, it is still a family business with the next generation, Mark Owen and Adam Mumford now respectively chairman of the Group and chairman of the holding company.

One of the company’s first products, launched in 1952, was a novel artificial respiration device they named the Oxford Inflating Bellows, but it is fair to say that for a while some of its products were not quite so innovative. These included window handles for the automotive industry, showerheads for B&Q and even, at one point, Christmas decorations for Woolworths.

Such low-tech diversions are now a distant memory. By the 1980s Owen Mumford had launched itself spectacularly into the medical device market with the world’s first automatic blood sampling lancing device. For the first time, diabetics could monitor blood glucose levels by taking blood samples from their fingers, rather than relying on less accurate urine samples, which had previously been the case.

Fast forward 60 or so years and the company has four Queen’s Awards for Enterprise and 175 patents under its belt. It is also still selling its original concept for the lancing device, along with many other products invented by the company.

Research and development already delivering results

But even the most innovative product will eventually see itself replaced with a new way of doing things, hence Owen Mumford’s constant and substantial investment in R&D.

The company is known best for its devices to help diabetics, but it currently generates the biggest revenues from auto injectors and injection pens which administer drugs to those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and infertility as well as many other therapy areas.

More than £20 billion worth of drugs are injected each year by patients around the world using auto injectors made in Oxfordshire by Owen Mumford.

However, as more drugs are developed using biologics and therefore requiring subcutaneous injections, and more people are diagnosed with diabetes, the demand for Owen Mumford’s medical devices continues to grow.

“China and India in particular are seeing a rise in diabetes, partly because of a change of diet, but also because diabetes is increasingly being seen as a treatable condition,” said Jarl. “Doctors in these countries are checking people for diabetes at an earlier stage, increasing demand for our products.”

In 2017 Owen Mumford won its latest Queen’s Award for Innovation for the Unifine Pentips Plus, an all-in-one pen needle for diabetic injections. It contains a new pen needle and a convenient removal chamber for interim disposal.

The company’s latest investment in R&D is delivering results. Last year saw the global introduction of Owen Mumford’s unique springless pre-filled safety syringes, Unisafe, arousing interest in almost all the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world. Later in September it launched a new safety pen needle, again designed to provide a safer product for healthcare professionals to minimise the risk of accidental needle stick injuries.

A race to be the first

The market is seeing huge investment into finding an alternative to injecting insulin. Few diabetics enjoy their routine injections and would prefer, if one was available, swallowing an insulin tablet. This would make some of Owen Mumford’s products currently on the market redundant over time as uptake increases and costs come down.

Except noone has successfully produced one yet. “Insulin is a biological drug, a living thing,” explained

Jarl. “Currently, the only way to get it into a human’s system is by subcutaneous injection. Some of the big insulin companies claim to be close to achieving it in tablet form, but we haven’t seen it commercialised yet.”

And Owen Mumford’s original finger pricker (lancing) device, also remains the most effective way of measuring glucose in the blood.

“There are other ways of measuring a person’s glucose levels: saliva, urine – Google even made a contact lens that took tears from your eyes and measured the glucose in them, but finger pricking still remains the most accurate,” said Jarl.

“If a person takes too much insulin, it can kill them, so absolute accuracy is essential. And the new technologies, so far, have been short of the age-old capillary blood sampling using the finger prick method.”

But Jarl is not complacent and knows that new technology will appear to solve these problems in a different way. “And we, like everyone else, are looking for solutions in that area,” he said.