Designing, prototyping and manufacturing medical devices: an overview

Abstract

Nowadays medical devices are a fast-growing industry. Advances in design, materials and technologies have increased the potential to find better solutions for those medical problems whose remedies were, up until now, unimaginable. A broad spectrum of new solutions is available ranging from new materials to new products, tools and procedures. Medical doctors have discovered how the latest advances in engineering support their work by making surgery or treatment processes easier than ever before. For this reason, medical devices are now a hot topic of industrial and academic interest in fields such as design, prototypes or manufacturing. This paper introduces a special issue with several medical device case studies, illustrating new developments in product design, material selection and prototype methods. In addition, the paper also reviews medical device development research and depicts some case studies to better explain the relationship between technology/engineering and medical devices. The paper contributes with some data on this combination of research fields.

Keywords:

• medical devices
• medical design
• rapid prototyping
• manufacturing

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the European Commission for their valuable support.