Expert support to speed up the development of medical devices is being made available through a new partnership serving small and medium-sized businesses.
Under the five-year agreement SMEs supported by the Medical Device Manufacturing Centre (MDMC) based at Heriot-Watt University will be able to engage with Technology Scotland to advance designs for novel healthcare solutions. Through its Product Design Scotland Network, Technology Scotland will focus in particular on the sustainability of medical devices.
The MDMC consortium includes the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow and Robert Gordon University and provides access to its £2 million specialist manufacturing facilities to small developers.
Technology Scotland supports more than 125 industrial and academic members across three networks to deliver advances in markets ranging from healthcare and communications to manufacturing and mobility.
READ MORE: 'Landmark' deal for medical development in Scotland
Professor Duncan Hand, director of the MDMC at Heriot-Watt University, said access to specialist design capability is one of the biggest challenges that SMEs working in the sector currently face.
"We are a nation of innovators, but it is essential that expert support is more easily and consistently accessible to SMEs to translate their game-changing innovations into devices that can be more quickly adopted for the benefit of patient care," he added.
Technology Scotland chief executive Alastair McInroy said the enabling technologies sector has long supported the country's "vibrant" life sciences industry. The partnership with the MDMC is designed to take that a step further.
"Realising the potential of these technologies, and successfully navigating the journey from concept to commercialisation, requires careful integration of design processes and frameworks,” he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here