BioMedDevice Show

Show Report

Boston 2019

The BioMedDevice Show is in Boston this week and Larry Barr and Chuck Weikel of Middle Branch Partners are attending.  The show is a commercial show, smaller and oriented toward contract manufacturers.  Nevertheless, it has a good cross section of firms from across the industry with specialities in metals, electronics (EMS and components), plastics and services.

A few short notes from the show that we thought were emerging trends:

— Robotics were driving the interests of exhibitors and attendees.  This includes everything from traditional applications in manufacturing to emerging applications in robotic surgery and portable health monitoring applications.

— Specialized electronics and EMS, including specialized sub-component assemblies such as touch screens and flexible circuits, received a lot of attention.  These specialized applications were represented by companies from North America, Germany and Korea.  This should continue to be a sub-segment of higher than average growth into the future.

— The increasing push toward higher complexity medical devices at the OEM level is creating a challenge for the contract manufacturers.  Front-end engineering and compliance is forcing resource re-allocations as company strive to keep up with their customer’s increasing demand for more sophisticated products and sub-assemblies.